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The Daring And The Crimes
Founding Crimes examines how America’s founders challenged British authority while also allowing injustices such as slavery, Native dispossession, political exclusion, and corruption to persist. Why was it important for you to write this book?
I wrote Founding Crimes because I don’t believe you can love a country honestly without being willing to look at all of it. For most of my life I understood the founding of our country heroically, simply as courage, genius, liberty, and stopped there. The Revolution produced some of the most radical language of freedom ever written, but the same men who risked everything also built a new nation that was built and sustained by systems of unfreedom — slavery, dispossession, exclusion, and the ordinary corruption of men protecting their own interests. Founding Crimes examines that contradiction as its central subject rather than an obscure footnote. I wanted to give readers a founding they could actually reckon with: the daring and the crimes in the same frame, told with enough honesty that the achievement ends up meaning more, not less.
Why was it important to include “witnesses” such as Phillis Wheatley, Abigail Adams, Elizabeth Freeman, Benjamin Banneker, and Robert Carter III alongside better-known founding figures?
Because they were there, and they saw it clearly — often more clearly than the men we usually quote. History told only through the powerful is only half a history. It’s easy to dismiss a modern critique of the founders as hindsight. But Phillis Wheatley was writing about liberty while she was enslaved. Abigail Adams told her husband at that time to “remember the ladies” while the new government was still being imagined. Elizabeth Freeman heard the words “all men are born free and equal” and walked into a courtroom to hold Massachusetts to those ideals. Benjamin Banneker wrote directly to Thomas Jefferson and named the hypocrisy to his face. Robert Carter III freed more than four hundred people when almost none of his peers would free one. These weren’t anachronisms. They were contemporaries and people who saw the gap between the words and the deeds and said so out loud. Their witness is what makes this a story about choices, not just circumstances.
How did you approach writing about historical figures who are often celebrated while also acknowledging their contradictions and failures?
I approached them the way I’d want to be approached — honestly, and as an adult. I resisted the urge to resolve the contradiction, because the contradiction is the point. A founder can be both a liberator and an enslaver; saying so plainly isn’t an attack, it’s accuracy. It would have been tempting either to excuse everything because of what these men built, or to reduce them to their worst acts and throw the rest away. Neither does justice to history or to the modern reader. So my rule was to hold the greatness and the guilt in the same hand: for example, to let Jefferson write the most luminous sentence in the language and to keep the salves he owned. A founder can be both a liberator and an enslaver. I was careful not to characterize anyone as just a hero or even a villain. Real people don’t come that way. We all go through life with flaws and weaknesses and, yet, heroically. I resisted the urge to resolve the contradiction because the contradiction is the point of being human.
Some readers may approach the book with strong opinions about the founding era. What would you say to readers who feel uncomfortable examining the contradictions you explore?
I understand the discomfort. I felt it when I realized the flaws and weaknesses of the great men we celebrate. I’m not asking anyone to stop loving this country or admiring what the founders accomplished. I’m asking us to love it the way you love a real person — with open eyes. A patriotism that can only survive if we hide half the story is a fragile thing. The one I’m after is sturdier: it can hold the greatness and the crimes together and still believe the American promise is worth keeping. You can honor the founders and still tell the truth about them; I think that’s the only honor worth giving.
Author Links: Amazon | GoodReads
David H. Tolly spent forty years as a turnaround executive, walking into companies to read the records everyone else had skimmed and find what they were hiding. He brings that same forensic eye to the American founding and reads it as what it legally was: a case file. The Declaration of Independence is a signed confession of treason, drafted by men who knew the penalty was the rope. The Revolution was financed by a continent of smugglers. The Constitution was written in a sealed room by men who counted human beings as three‑fifths of a person. An entire state legislature was bribed to sell off an empire of western land.
Across twenty‑seven documents and ten witnesses — from the Sugar Act and the seizure of John Hancock’s smuggling sloop to the Yazoo land fraud and the Alien and Sedition Acts — Tolly builds the case, exhibit by exhibit, with every claim sourced and every legend flagged. This is not founder‑bashing: each chapter credits the genius as honestly as it charges the crime. Abigail Adams, Benjamin Banneker, and an enslaved woman who sued for her freedom take the stand as witnesses the official story leaves out.
The result is genius and rot, on the same page, in the same hand — a founding history with the pace of a thriller and the rigor of a prosecution. The charges are real. The evidence is signed. And two hundred and fifty years later, the case is still open.
Stormfront Rising
Stormfront Rising is a big, rowdy fantasy adventure built around danger, discovery, and the kind of companionship that’s forged when everyone is wet, wounded, outnumbered, and still cracking jokes. Jason N. Long opens with a ship caught in an unnatural storm, purple lightning crawling across the sky, and a kraken turning disaster into outright catastrophe. From there, the novel keeps widening its horizon, drawing readers into a world of rival empires, elemental dragons, dangerous magic, strange oceans, and cities with histories that feel much larger than the characters passing through them. The maps, faction guide, and detailed systems of measurement reinforce the sense that this is a fully imagined place.
The book’s real engine, though, is its band of survivors. Leo, Zoe, Thorn, Ben, Toby, and the wider cast have distinct voices, skills, and emotional burdens, and their relationships give the story its warmth. Leo’s practical instincts, Zoe’s dangerous confidence, Thorn’s enormous personality, and Ben’s anxious intelligence create a lively rhythm that carries through the quieter stretches as well as the fights. Their banter can be filthy, affectionate, cruel, and unexpectedly tender, often within the same conversation. That mix makes them feel less like a polished heroic fellowship and more like people who’ve learned to love one another while standing knee-deep in trouble.
Long approaches fantasy with a tinkerer’s enthusiasm. Weapons have mechanisms, magic has consequences, cultures have customs, and politics shape nearly every choice. The story blends seafaring adventure, military fantasy, dark comedy, cosmic speculation, and dragon mythology into something proudly excessive and deeply personal. Its action is physical and graphic, but the violence has weight because the characters carry their losses forward. Even the jokes often sit beside grief, fear, or loyalty, which gives the novel an emotional texture beneath all the blood, monsters, and spectacle. The author’s acknowledgement of his “three-body problem” and “quantum queries” hints at the scientific curiosity running beneath the fantasy framework.
By the time its many conflicts converge, Stormfront Rising feels like the opening movement of a saga that has been living in its author’s imagination for years. It’s ambitious, unruly, funny, violent, and sincere, with a world large enough to reward readers who enjoy learning names, factions, histories, and rules as they travel. Most importantly, it understands that epic fantasy works best when the fate of nations is tied to people we’d willingly follow into a storm.
Pages: 471 | ASIN : B0GXFGQ2BM
The Environment Leaders Create
Helm & Horizon is a yearlong leadership guide organized as a progression from self-leadership to team leadership, strategic thinking, and legacy, treating leadership as a daily practice. Why was this an important book for you to write?
Throughout my career, I spent countless hours reading some of the greatest leadership books out there and listening to leadership podcasts and audiobooks while running along the California coastline. I filled notebooks with ideas from military leaders, historians, philosophers, psychologists, coaches, and business executives. Every author offered another piece of the puzzle. Over time, I noticed the principles were remarkably consistent. The source didn’t matter. Marcus Aurelius, Admiral Chester Nimitz, John Maxwell, Admiral Arleigh Burke, Sun Tzu, Simon Sinek, to Brené Brown- they all pointed toward the same timeless truths about leadership.
I wanted to bring those ideas together in one place and make them practical. So instead of writing another leadership framework, my goal was to create a guide that distilled the best ideas into something people could apply every single day. The examples come from U.S. naval case studies because that’s the world I know best, but the principles are universal. Trust, humility, accountability, resilience, communication, and service aren’t military concepts. They’re human ones. My hope is that a teacher, business owner, healthcare professional, coach, parent, or military leader can all open the same page and find something meaningful.
The book emphasizes that leadership is a daily habit rather than something earned with rank or position. When did that philosophy first become important to you?
I don’t think there was one defining moment, but I will say that one experience shaped my leadership philosophy more than any other.
During my first tour as a surface warfare officer, my ship went through six commanding officers in less than three years. Some departures were routine, while others followed highly publicized incidents. Every transition brought a different leadership style, different priorities, and a different command climate. As a junior officer, I watched firsthand how dramatically one leader could influence the morale, trust, and effectiveness of an entire crew.
Then I transferred to my next ship, and the contrast couldn’t have been greater. We had a commanding officer who deliberately pushed decision-making down to the lowest levels and encouraged initiative instead of demanding compliance. People weren’t afraid to speak up, solve problems, or take responsibility because they knew they were trusted to do so. The culture was fundamentally different, and so were the results.
Experiencing those two commands back-to-back completely changed how I viewed leadership. I realized that leadership is reflected in the environment leaders create and the way they bring out the best in the people around them. Every conversation, every decision, and every action either strengthens trust or weakens it. That comparison stayed with me throughout the rest of my career, and it became one of the central ideas behind Helm & Horizon. Leadership isn’t a rank, title, or position. It’s a mindset. It’s the accumulation of hundreds of ordinary decisions that shape a culture, influence people, and ultimately define the legacy we leave behind.
Writing 366 entries is an enormous undertaking. How did you keep each day’s lesson fresh while maintaining a consistent voice throughout the book?
There were definitely days when I wondered if I’d ever reach Day 366. Fortunately, I wasn’t starting with a blank sheet of paper. For several years I’d been reading, highlighting, taking notes, and collecting ideas from leadership books that changed the way I thought about leading people.
The challenge was deciding what deserved to be included. Every principle had to earn its place. I kept asking myself two questions. Is this timeless? Can someone put this into practice tomorrow? The consistent voice came from looking at every lesson through the same lens. Every entry had to help someone become a better leader today. That’s why each day follows the same format. A leadership principle. A practical application. Two actions to put into practice. One final thought to carry forward.
In the military, we have a term called BLUF, which stands for Bottom Line Up Front. That’s what I wanted Helm & Horizon to be. A collection of concise, accessible leadership principles that deliver value quickly, especially when your time to read is limited.
Although the book is written for Sailors, many of the principles seem applicable beyond the military. What do you think civilian leaders can take away from Helm & Horizon?
One of the most rewarding parts of publishing Helm & Horizon has been discovering who is reading it. Although I wrote it through the lens of a Navy Sailor, I never intended it to be just a military leadership book. Leadership is ultimately about people, and people face many of the same challenges no matter where they work. That’s been reinforced by the feedback I’ve received.
Physicians have shared that they’re giving the book to every new medical resident joining their program. Financial executives have told me they’re using it to develop leadership within their organizations. I’ve used it myself to lead discussions with an eighth-grade classroom, where the conversations quickly moved beyond the Navy and into character, teamwork, and personal responsibility. Today, those same principles form the basis of a professional leadership course I’m developing with the University of Michigan, with Helm & Horizon as its primary resource.
Experiences like those have been incredibly rewarding because they confirm something I believed from the beginning. The stories may come from ships, deployments, and naval history, but the lessons don’t belong to the military. A school principal may never command a destroyer, and a physician may never stand watch on the bridge, but both are responsible for earning trust, developing teams, making difficult decisions, and creating a culture where people can succeed.
If Helm & Horizon helps readers recognize that leadership isn’t defined by a title or profession, but by the choices they make every day and the impact they have on others, then I’ve accomplished exactly what I set out to do.
Author Links: GoodReads | LinkedIn | Facebook | Website | Amazon
Every day is an opportunity to lead. Helm & Horizon: Daily Leadership Principles for the Motivated Sailor is a 365-day leadership guide built for serious professionals committed to continuous growth. Designed for leaders balancing demanding schedules, each concise daily entry delivers practical wisdom drawn from proven leadership works, naval history, and real-world operational experience.
Recognized as the official partner publication of DODReads, a leading platform dedicated to military leadership, professional reading, and lifelong learning, Helm & Horizon stands alongside works trusted by service members, veterans, and defense professionals seeking disciplined leadership development.
This comprehensive year-long guide draws from over fifty of the most influential leadership books ever written. It integrates insights from best-selling authors such as Jocko Willink (Extreme Ownership), Stephen Covey (The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People), Ryan Holiday (The Obstacle Is the Way), L. David Marquet (Turn the Ship Around!), and Sun Tzu (The Art of War), alongside naval case studies featuring leaders like Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Admiral Hyman G. Rickover, and Medal of Honor recipient Chief Boatswain’s Mate James E. Williams. From Viktor Frankl’s reflections on meaning under hardship (Man’s Search for Meaning) to Angela Duckworth’s research on perseverance (Grit), the book connects timeless principles to the demands of leadership under pressure.
Each of the 365 daily entries teaches a focused leadership principle with immediately applicable insight.
You will learn how to:
• Take ownership and build a culture of accountability
• Make disciplined decisions in high-pressure environments
• Communicate with clarity and moral authority
• Inspire sustained performance through standards and example
• Lead ethically when stakes are high
• Develop cohesive teams capable of operating independently
Read one page a day. Reflect. Apply. Repeat. Over time, you will build the habits, judgment, and professional character required of leaders entrusted with real responsibility.
Whether at sea, in business, or within your community, Helm & Horizon provides a structured framework for daily leadership development.
The leadership journey starts with you.
Lead with Purpose. Take the Helm. Keep Your Eyes on the Horizon.
The Word – The Second Book of the Beatles
Ian Croskell’s The Word is a playful blend of speculative fiction, Beatles history, religious satire, and coming-of-age story. Set centuries after the band’s lifetime, it imagines a society in which John, Paul, George, and Ringo are worshipped as gods, their songs are treated as scripture, and places connected to their lives have become religious sites. The story follows Paula, a student in the Order of Paul at Blossomwood, as she studies the “Great Story” and exchanges letters with John, a more sceptical student from the Order of John. Through classes, legends, pilgrimages, and personal reflections, the book revisits the Beatles’ rise while showing how history can gradually turn into mythology.
The book’s most distinctive feature is the way it transforms familiar Beatles details into sacred traditions. Managers become saints, concerts become miracles, instruments become relics, and song lyrics are interpreted as spiritual teachings. Croskell clearly knows the band’s history, and he draws on an impressive range of anecdotes about their music, relationships, public appearances, collaborators, and cultural impact. The humor often comes from the gap between the original event and the grand religious meaning later attached to it. A snowstorm becomes divine intervention, a pop television appearance becomes a revelation, and Paul’s missing bass inspires a quest worthy of medieval legend. It’s affectionate satire, driven less by mockery than by curiosity about why people need heroes, stories, rituals, and places of pilgrimage.
Paula gives the book its warmth. She’s devout, romantic, talkative, and increasingly willing to question what she’s been taught. Her letters to John create an engaging tension between belief and doubt, particularly when they discuss the love between Lennon and McCartney, the reliability of religious texts, and the human need to find meaning in coincidence and loss. Their conversations keep the novel from becoming only a collection of Beatles facts. By the final chapter, the friendships forming around Paula begin to echo the Beatles’ own origins, giving the story a satisfying sense of renewal. The book’s leisurely, anecdotal structure means that it often feels like spending time with an enthusiastic fan who keeps remembering one more story, but that conversational quality is also central to its charm.
This book will appeal most to readers who already enjoy Beatles history and are open to seeing it rearranged into an imaginative new mythology. Fans who recognize the references, quotations, supporting figures, and small historical incidents will get the richest experience, especially those interested in Lennon and McCartney’s complicated creative bond. It should also suit readers who like gentle religious satire, alternate futures, and novels that mix ideas with character rather than racing through a tightly plotted adventure. The Word is a warm, funny meditation on fandom, faith, friendship, and the stories people build around the artists they love.
Pages: 313 | ASIN : B0H1YV676X
Helm & Horizon: Leadership Principles for the Motivated Sailor
Helm & Horizon: Daily Leadership Principles for the Motivated Sailor by Steven-Paul Lapid is a yearlong leadership guide built around 366 short daily readings. Each entry draws a principle from an established leadership, history, psychology, business, or military book, then translates it into the language and routines of naval service. The consistent format includes a core principle, a story or operational example, two practical actions under “Take the Helm,” and a closing reflection called “Eyes on the Horizon.” Organized as a progression from self-leadership to team leadership, strategic thinking, and legacy, the book treats leadership as a daily practice rather than an achievement tied to rank.
Lapid’s strongest contribution is his ability to connect broad leadership ideas to situations a Sailor can picture immediately. Concepts such as accountability, humility, emotional intelligence, decentralized command, and moral courage are placed aboard ships, inside watch teams, and amid maintenance, training, personnel problems, and emergencies. Naval history gives the lessons additional weight, with examples ranging from Chester Nimitz and James Stockdale to the crews of the USS Fitzgerald, USS Forrestal, and USS Thresher. Because the readings are brief and concrete, they could work well before quarters, during a Sailor 360 discussion, or as prompts for a division’s professional development.
The book’s steady structure is also central to the experience. Its repetition reinforces the argument that character is formed through habits, though readers moving straight through all 366 entries may notice familiar themes and historical figures returning often. That rhythm makes more sense when the book is used as intended, one reading at a time, with room to reflect and apply the lesson. Lapid writes with conviction and a clear affection for naval service, and his recurring nautical language gives the collection a unified voice. The result feels less like a conventional book to finish and more like a leadership companion to keep nearby, mark up, discuss, and revisit.
This book will be most appreciated by active-duty Sailors, especially junior officers, chiefs, petty officers, and emerging leaders who want practical material they can use with their teams. Veterans, military families, ROTC and academy students, and civilian managers who enjoy service-based leadership lessons should also find value in it. Readers looking for an intensive academic study of leadership will probably use it differently, but anyone who benefits from brief daily prompts, memorable examples, and clear actions will find plenty to carry into the next watch. It’s particularly well suited to leaders who believe professional growth happens through small, repeated choices and who want a structured way to turn that belief into practice.
Pages: 770 | ASIN : B0GHZL6H9N
We the Presidents
Ronald Gruner’s We the Presidents is an ambitious, highly readable history of the American presidency from Warren G. Harding through Joe Biden, followed by an epilogue examining the opening phase of Donald Trump’s second term. Rather than treating each administration as an isolated biography, Gruner traces how presidential decisions accumulate over time. Immigration restrictions enacted in the 1920s, New Deal programs, Cold War interventions, tax policy, civil rights legislation, healthcare reform, financial deregulation, and the growth of executive power all become parts of one continuing story. The result is a broad account of how the modern United States was built, altered, and occasionally damaged by the people occupying the White House.
The book’s greatest strength is its sense of historical continuity. Gruner regularly reaches backward and forward to show how an idea associated with one president reappeared under another. Andrew Mellon’s tax theories anticipate later supply-side economics. Herbert Hoover’s belief in rugged individualism continues to shape arguments about healthcare and social programs. Truman’s decisions help define the Cold War inherited by Eisenhower and Kennedy, while Johnson’s domestic ambitions become inseparable from the escalating war in Vietnam. These connections make the book feel like more than a procession of elections, scandals, and famous speeches. Policies have long afterlives here, and presidents frequently find themselves dealing with consequences created decades before they took office.
Gruner also has a talent for finding vivid human details that keep a long work moving. Harding’s poker games, Coolidge’s grief after his son’s death, Truman’s blunt sense of responsibility, Eisenhower’s preference for quiet leadership, Ford’s decency, Reagan’s optimism, and Obama’s composure all give the political history a personal dimension. The chapters are organized around clearly defined episodes, and the prose usually moves briskly between biography, economics, diplomacy, and social change. Photographs, political cartoons, charts, quotations, and statistical comparisons reinforce the narrative, making the book approachable even when it’s explaining subjects such as monetary policy, mortgage-backed securities, taxation, or federal regulation.
The same confident voice that makes the book engaging also gives it a distinctly argumentative character. Gruner isn’t simply assembling events. He reassesses neglected presidents, questions familiar reputations, praises courage and restraint, and identifies choices he believes produced lasting harm. Harding receives a more sympathetic treatment than many readers will expect, while presidents with celebrated public images are examined alongside their failures, contradictions, and missed opportunities. Some conclusions, especially those involving what might have happened under different leadership, are speculative. Still, the author generally makes his reasoning visible, supports it with extensive notes and data, and encourages readers to consider presidential performance in terms of consequences rather than party loyalty.
This book will appeal most to readers who enjoy accessible political history and want to understand how current American disputes acquired their present shape. It’s especially well suited to people who know the major presidents and events but haven’t yet seen the connections among tax policy, immigration, civil rights, foreign intervention, healthcare, regulation, debt, and public trust. Readers looking for a neutral reference work should expect a strong interpretive voice, but those open to a sustained historical argument will find plenty to think about. I’d recommend it for general history readers, civic-minded book groups, college students, and anyone trying to place today’s political conflicts within a century of presidential choices.
Pages: 648 | ISBN : 978-1737823100
Founding Crimes: How Smuggling, Fraud, and Treason Built the United States
Founding Crimes recasts America’s founding as a case assembled from twenty-seven documents, beginning with the Sugar Act and ending with the Alien and Sedition Acts. Author David H. Tolly treats declarations, constitutions, treaties, financial reports, and political essays as evidence rather than ceremonial artifacts. His central idea is that the founders committed one set of crimes against British authority while permitting another set through slavery, Native dispossession, political exclusion, and corruption. The result is a chronological narrative that connects familiar documents into one developing argument about who receives liberty, who controls it, and who pays for it.
The book’s crime-history structure gives the material unusual momentum. Tolly introduces each major document as an “exhibit” and interrupts the official record with “witnesses” such as Phillis Wheatley, Abigail Adams, Elizabeth Freeman, Benjamin Banneker, and Robert Carter III. These chapters keep the book from becoming a procession of famous white statesmen talking to one another. They also show how people excluded from the founding’s promises understood those promises, challenged their selective application, and sometimes forced courts or lawmakers to honor them. Episodes involving John Hancock’s smuggling case, Thomas Paine’s pamphleteering, the negotiations in Paris, Hamilton’s financial program, and the Yazoo land scandal are told with the pace and scene-building of narrative nonfiction.
Tolly’s background as a chief financial officer shapes an approach that looks closely at buried clauses, interested estimates, political bargains, and benefits flowing to parties who preferred not to advertise them. The sections on the Constitution are especially effective because he places its euphemistic language beside blunt explanations of what its slavery provisions accomplished. He’s also careful to distinguish documented fact, later legend, and contested interpretation, openly marking disputes such as the possible influence of the Somerset decision on slaveholding colonists. The repeated courtroom language and recurring formulations occasionally make the argument feel more emphatic than it needs to be, but that repetition also gives a long, document-heavy book a clear spine.
This book will be most appreciated by readers who enjoy American history but find conventional textbook treatments too polished or fragmented. It’s particularly well suited to fans of narrative history, political biography, legal history, and financial investigations, as well as teachers or discussion groups looking for an accessible way into primary documents. Readers willing to hold admiration and moral judgment together will get the most from it. Tolly’s recommendation isn’t that the founding should be worshipped or discarded, but that its promises should be read closely, its bargains understood honestly, and its unfinished work treated as an inheritance that still belongs to the public.
Pages: 254 | ASIN : B0H777HG7F
Ghost Town
A. J. Thibault’s Ghost Town is a speculative thriller that combines time travel, espionage, paranormal horror, and the harsh mythology of the American West. The novel follows Richard Hart, a former intelligence operative and RAND analyst whose search for direction leads him into a covert military experiment near the abandoned town of Ehrenberg, Arizona. Transported from 1989 to 1891 alongside pilot Honey Burns and drifter Boon, Hart must navigate a community governed by appetite, suspicion, and violence. The book’s shifting chronology and alternating character histories gradually connect Hart’s private crisis to Moodbain, a legendary agent overseeing a technology capable of altering perception, matter, and time.
Hart gives the novel its emotional and intellectual center. His formidable analytical abilities are balanced by anger, loneliness, and a lingering fear that his achievements have amounted to little. Thibault’s extensive account of Hart’s impoverished Brooklyn childhood clarifies why he values intelligence so fiercely and why humiliation can provoke him into violence. His father’s lesson that “a real man has more than his brain and his fists. He has a heart” becomes a quiet standard against which Hart’s later decisions can be measured. Honey and Boon receive similarly revealing histories, allowing the novel to treat its three stranded travelers as psychologically burdened people rather than pieces in a time-travel puzzle.
The 1891 sections provide the book’s strongest atmosphere. Ehrenberg is crowded with saloons, card games, public punishments, sexual coercion, religious fervor, and eruptions of collective cruelty. As the experiment weakens the characters’ judgment and resistance, ordinary events acquire the instability of a nightmare. Thibault frequently moves between bleak comedy, grotesque spectacle, and genuine menace, creating a town that feels both historically tangible and mentally distorted. The novel’s breadth gives it considerable imaginative energy, though its many flashbacks, tonal shifts, and extended confrontations sometimes slow the central ordeal and require close attention from the reader.
The final explanation reframes the ghost town as both an experimental weapon and a moral test. Hart survives because he can think beyond the apparent limits of his situation, but his more consequential act comes later, when he destroys the information needed to reproduce the technology. That choice answers the question underlying his journey: whether intelligence serves power or conscience. “Time was the most valuable thing he had left,” the narrator observes, and the line captures the novel’s concern with mortality, agency, and responsibility. Ghost Town is an ambitious, densely plotted novel whose most memorable achievement is its fusion of a violent Western setting with a Cold War meditation on the dangers of controlling human perception and history.
Pages: 460 | ASIN : B088WSBPRM
