Blog Archives
Decreasing the Fear
You’re Going to Die But Not Me follows a psychologist as she draws on research, faith, philosophy, grief, and dark humor to transform her lifelong terror of nonexistence into an honest relationship with mortality. Why was this an important book for you to write?
Writing the book became a way for me to deal with my rumination. Seriously, I found myself thinking (read: dreading) about my mortality every day, several times every day.
How did your experience as a psychologist shape the way you investigated your own mortality anxiety?
I can say a couple of things about this. First of all, feelings want/need to be expressed. If we don’t find some way of expression, they rattle around in the container of our head, bouncing around with nowhere to go. There are several ways of expressing, and writing sure is one. Also, a general psychological concept is that when we avoid what we fear, the fear grows. The antidote to that is approach. So the decision to dive in with both feet was my way of not avoiding. Also, writing the book became what I see as a course of “exposure therapy” for me: safely, gently, and kindly exposing myself to the fearful stimuli (DEATH) with the hope and intent of decreasing the fear.
Which philosophy, religious tradition, or scientific theory most challenged your existing beliefs?
I would say I was more fascinated than challenged. For sure, my examination of the way various religions dealt with death and the afterlife was, well, too far-fetched and also sometimes too icky and scary. I did find that after researching the literature on near-death experiences, my skepticism ticked down a notch or two.
How did you decide when humor would illuminate the subject of death rather than diminish its seriousness?
I really don’t think there was much of a conscious decision involved in when to use humor. I do believe in the whole “spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down” theory in general. And humor just seems to spring out of me, often at inopportune times. So, it just seemed to happen organically.
Author Links: GoodReads | X (Twitter) | Facebook | Website | Substack | Amazon
What makes the journey unforgettable is her own presence at its center: a candid, self-aware narrator wrestling with her fear of annihilation, punctuating deep research with stories that are as tender as they are illuminating. This is not just a meditation on mortality, it’s an enthralling quest for meaning, brimming with emotional honesty and intellectual daring. Scott’s voice is the rare guide who can make you laugh while asking you to face the abyss, and leave you strangely grateful for the view.
Corvus: A Crow’s Story
Shallen Anne Chitwood’s Corvus is a warm and accessible children’s novel about courage, friendship, grief, and personal growth. Set among a community of crows living near a family farm, the story follows Corvus, a young crow whose fear of flying separates him from his siblings and threatens his place within the flock. His unlikely friendship with Clarence Silkwood, a proudly theatrical monarch caterpillar, gives the narrative its humor and emotional center. Together, their parallel journeys show that transformation can be physical, emotional, or both.
Clarence’s lively first-person narration makes the natural world feel immediate and entertaining. His elaborate titles, comic confidence, and conversational asides create a playful voice that should appeal to young readers, while his observations introduce facts about crows, monarch butterflies, migration, metamorphosis, and animal behavior. These educational elements are integrated into the characters’ experiences. The book’s central idea is expressed clearly when Clarence tells Corvus, “We all grow and change in our own way.”
The novel also gives meaningful attention to loss and responsibility. Valia’s devotion to Corvus, the Cedar Clan’s communal mourning, and Clarence’s acceptance of his limited lifespan allow the story to address death with honesty and tenderness. These scenes carry genuine emotional weight without losing sight of the intended audience. The book’s strongest moments often arise from simple acts of loyalty, as when Clarence observes, “Sometimes that is the best thing you can do for a friend. Just be there.” Such passages give the story a compassionate understanding of how friendship can sustain someone through fear and sorrow.
Corvus presents bravery as a quality developed through love, experience, and purposeful action. Corvus’s eventual flight is satisfying because it grows from everything he has learned about himself, his family, and his responsibility toward others. The conclusion brings the novel’s themes of metamorphosis and self-knowledge together while preserving the wonder and humor of Clarence’s narration. With its memorable animal characters, gentle instruction, and sincere emotional arc, Corvus offers young readers an engaging story about discovering the strength to become fully themselves.
Pages: 143 | ASIN : B0H4HTLL98
Overwhelming Evidence
In Search of the Optimal Human Diet is a deeply researched guide built around the conviction that a plant-based diet is the clearest answer to meeting our nutritional needs. What did you hope to contribute to the conversation about nutrition that other books have not?
While there is no shortage of books on nutrition, I have noticed in my personal life as well as in popular media that most laypeople don’t know the basic chemical composition of the essential nutrients—proteins, carbohydrates, lipids, vitamins, and minerals—leaving them without the requisite knowledge to comprehend the complex metabolic pathways by which our bodies assimilate food. In Search of the Optimal Human Diet bridges that gap by exploring the history of nutritional science from the discovery of nutrients to breaking the biochemical codes of metabolic process. In so doing, readers learn how metabolites from digesting plant foods lead to vibrant health, while metabolites from digesting animal foods lead to degenerative diseases. I have read dozens of books on diet and nutrition, but I have yet to find one that presents the evidence in this easily digestible format that breaks down this complex subject matter into small, bite-sized pieces.
Were there moments in the history of nutrition that changed your own thinking about science?
Yes. In the first two decades after World War II, evidence was mounting from observational studies that people living in the US and Western Europe, where animal-centric diets were the norm, had much higher rates of heart disease, diabetes, and cancers than people living in Asia, Africa, and Eastern Europe, where plant-based diets were the norm. It was during this crucial period, under extreme pressure from the powerful animal products industries, that the mainstream medical establishment made the conscious decision to treat degenerative diseases with drugs and surgeries rather than prevention through diet and nutrition. This sad episode in the history of nutrition taught me that science is often manipulated by special interests for their own purposes, so it became incumbent upon me to verify the independence of my sources.
How do you respond to readers who agree with your goals but question whether one dietary pattern fits everyone?
We humans, are great apes, and our physiology is very similar to our close great ape relatives: chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, and orangutans. These species are all herbivores; no one would suggest they have subgroups that need meat or dairy to be healthy. So why is it then that of all the great apes, only humans don’t fit one dietary pattern? The overwhelming evidence from literally thousands of observational, interventional, and pathological studies has shown that Homo sapiens as a species thrive on a diet of whole plant foods and succumb to degenerative diseases on an animal-centric diet. Of course, this isn’t to say that there is one plant-based diet that fits all. There are many people who have allergies to various plant foods, and they should definitely avoid those foods. Fortunately, there is so much variety in the plant kingdom that everyone can build their own plant-based diet that is both nutritious and delicious.
What is one thing you hope readers take away from In Search of the Optimal Human Diet?
This is an easy one: Think of a plant-based diet not as an exercise in self-deprivation, but rather as an opportunity for self-empowerment. You can be the master of your own health.
Author Links: NetGalley | Website
Nutritional Science
In Search of the Optimal Human Diet gives readers a history of nutritional science that treats nutrition as a developing scientific story rather than a set of trendy rules. How has your own experience with diet influenced the conclusions in the book?
My own experience with a whole-food, plant-based diet has conformed to the findings of nutritional science. While my father, who ate an animal-centric diet died of a massive heart attack at age 51, I show no evidence of heart disease at age 73, and I still lead a physically active life. When I observe my peers who eat an animal-centric diet many of them suffer from late-stage degenerative diseases. My personal experience does not constitute scientific proof, but it has definitely reinforced my confidence that I’m on the right track.
What types of evidence—epidemiological, clinical, or mechanistic—do you find most compelling?
What I find most compelling is that in the study of nutritional science, all three of these evidence-based branches of scientific inquiry have reached the same conclusion: humans thrive on a whole-food, plant-based diet and succumb to degenerative diseases on an animal-centric diet. The fact that these three different approaches to the study of nutritional science corroborate each other makes an extremely powerful case for the efficacy of a whole-food, plant-based diet.
How should readers think about sugar, salt, and processed food within your model?
As I have demonstrated in my book, a whole-food, plant-based diet is the optimal human diet. While sugar and many processed foods are plant-based, they are not whole foods. This is important because whole plant foods contain many nutrients, including fiber, that are extracted from processed foods. In effect, processed foods supply nutrient-poor calories that replace the nutrient-rich calories found in whole plant foods. Salt is a mineral compound of sodium and chloride. Sodium and chloride are essential nutrients, but we get enough of them from whole plant foods and don’t need to supplement with table salt. Excess salt in the diet is a risk factor for high blood pressure. Most people get the essential mineral iodine from iodized salt, but seaweed is a healthier option.
What misconceptions do you hope this book helps correct?
There are many, but here are two:
1) One common misconception is that humans need lots of protein in our diet to be strong and healthy. This misconception stems from experiments conducted over a century ago on rats. Since then, interventional studies on actual humans have shown conclusively that our protein requirements are actually quite modest and easily met with a whole-food, plant-based diet; indeed, studies have shown that animal protein in the diet is a risk factor for heart disease and cancer. And yet, this high-protein myth persists to this day.
2) Another common misconception is that nutritional science is inconclusive and that the evidence from scientific studies is often contradictory. This misconception has been manufactured by the animal products and processed food industries. They have used their immense financial resources to fund research designed to produce results favorable to them. These biased studies are then fed to laypeople in expensive public relations campaigns to confuse the issue. Meanwhile, research conducted by independent, objective scientists is often suppressed in the popular media. Among truly independent researchers, the science is pointing in one direction: toward the efficacy of a whole-food, plant-based diet to treat and prevent chronic degenerative diseases.
Author Links: NetGalley | Website
One Leaf, One Life
One Leaf, One Life is a meditative blend of botanical art, memoir, science, and spiritual reflection, built around Ramiro F. Prudencio’s colored pencil portraits of autumn leaves and the essays they awaken in him. A retired urologist born in Bolivia and shaped by immigration, medicine, loss, aging, family, and art, Prudencio turns each leaf into a small threshold: into photosynthesis and color theory, into memories of Chicago autumns, into his childhood injury that cost him an eye, into his late discovery of colored pencils, into gratitude for the ordinary green machinery that lets us breathe.
What moved me most is how earnestly the book believes in attention. Prudencio doesn’t glance at a leaf, he almost courts it. A maple becomes a dancer, an elm becomes a question mark asking Quo vadis?, an artichoke rises like an “emperor thistle” dressed for coronation. That often feels tender and earned, especially because the author’s own life is folded into the observation. When he writes about losing an eye at five, and then later about learning to see inward, the metaphor of the leaf stops being decorative. It becomes personal. I felt that same quiet force in the story of his grandson bringing him leaves by color until he finally presents one as “a rainbow.” It’s a small scene, but it contains the whole book’s heartbeat, wonder passed between generations, and nature translated through affection.
The writing is at its best when it lets precision and feeling breathe together. I enjoyed the way Prudencio can move from chlorophyll, electromagnetic waves, and the xylem’s slow upward pull of water into something almost prayerful without seeming embarrassed by either science or awe. His background as a surgeon gives the book a steady hand. He loves process, tools, discipline, and the almost surgical patience of burnishing pigment into paper. There’s a genuine soulfulness here, and the repetition of certain ideas, aging, humility, service, purpose, gradually begins to feel less like insistence and more like a ritual.
The book feels beautifully made, with a level of craftsmanship that matches the patience of the artwork itself. The cover is elegant and inviting, the layout gives the leaf portraits room to breathe, and the production has a gallery-like polish that makes the reading experience feel contemplative. I also found the author’s training in ikebana especially distinctive, because it gives the book a sensibility that goes beyond botanical illustration. There’s a disciplined attention to line, balance, emptiness, and natural form that seems to shape the images and the way he thinks about aging, beauty, and impermanence.
By the end, I felt I had read not a conventional art book, and not exactly a memoir, but a late-life testament written by someone trying to make peace with time without surrendering curiosity. Its loveliest idea is that decline can still be radiant, that what is scarred, curled, spotted, or nearly spent may be carrying its deepest beauty at the very moment we’re trained to overlook it. I closed the book feeling calmer, a little more awake to the living world, and more grateful for small, perishable things. I’d recommend One Leaf, One Life to reflective readers, nature lovers, artists, retirees, caregivers, and anyone drawn to books that turn close observation into a gentle philosophy of living.
Pages: 169 | ISBN : 978-9917032519
The Limits: Walking the Mind’s Bogs (Second Edition)
The Limits: Walking the Mind’s Bogs, by Dan M. Mrejeru, is a philosophical memoir and speculative nonfiction work about the boundaries of human thought, especially the tension between linear and nonlinear ways of understanding reality. The book moves through reflections on evolution, consciousness, science, spirituality, memory, illusion, and personal transformation, using recurring images of bridges, rivers, tunnels, and journeys to explore how the mind reaches for what it cannot fully explain.
I found the book ambitious in a way that feels deeply personal. Mrejeru isn’t simply presenting ideas. He’s walking through them, sometimes circling the same thought again and again until it opens from another side. That repetition can be demanding. But I also think that restlessness is part of the point. The book feels like a mind refusing to accept a flat map of reality. It wants depth, motion, and hidden structure. It wants the bridge.
I appreciated the author’s choice to blend science, mysticism, memory, and self-questioning without drawing hard borders between them. The result is somewhat uneven, but fascinating. Some passages read like philosophical inquiry, others like a dream journal, and others like a private lecture on consciousness and complexity. Even if you don’t follow every turn, you’ll respect the seriousness of the search. There’s a candid vulnerability beneath the abstract language, especially when the narrator admits uncertainty, obsession, and the desire to remake his own thinking.
I like how sincerely the book treats thinking itself as an adventure. Thinking becomes travel, conflict, discovery, confusion, and renewal. That gives the book energy, even when the ideas are dense. I especially liked that the author is willing to let uncertainty stay visible. He asks big questions without pretending every answer is within reach, and that makes the book feel more honest than a purely argumentative work.
I recommend The Limits to readers who enjoy reflective philosophical nonfiction, especially those drawn to consciousness studies, metaphysics, nonlinear thinking, and books that blur the line between intellectual exploration and inner journey. For someone willing to wander through a dense, strange, and searching landscape of thought, this book offers a singular experience.
Pages: 204 | ASIN : B0GZ3D6YNS
Focused on the Science
Nurse Florence®, What is Acne? follows three curious friends as Nurse Florence transforms a simple question about pimples into an empowering, science-based journey through the causes, types, and treatments of acne. What inspired you to create the Nurse Florence® series as a way to teach health concepts to children?
During the COVID pandemic, I wanted to help supplement my children’s science education and thought that if I wrote a kids’ book series, then that would help. “The kids would have to read it since Dad wrote it.”
How did you determine which scientific terms were appropriate and accessible for elementary-age readers?
I use the concept of intellectual stimulation with my readers, which is borrowed from transformational leadership. I choose to believe that my readers can understand complex ideas as long as they are broken down a bit.
Acne can be an emotional topic. How did you balance scientific detail with empathy in your storytelling?
I tried not to focus on the emotions teenagers may have with acne and instead stayed focused on the science about the condition.
Are there other health topics you’re excited to explore with Nurse Florence® in future books?
I love writing all Nurse Florence® books and love this journey I am on of lifelong learning as I research topics and generate material to teach young people about their bodies.
Author Links: GoodReads | Facebook | Website | Essay Contest | YouTube | Dow Creative Enterprises® | Nurse Florence Project | LinkedIn | Amazon
The Science of How to Bring Back Eden
This is a wide-ranging book that blends spiritual argument, personal testimony, environmental planning, and futuristic invention into a single narrative. It opens from a personal place, then expands outward until it’s trying to account for the fate of the Earth, the meaning of Eden, the role of conscience, and the future of science all at once. The author presents the book as both an explanation and a call to action, and that gives it a distinctive shape. It isn’t just meant to be read. It’s meant to persuade the reader that restoration is possible and that human beings have a direct role in bringing it about.
What makes the book different is how little distance there is between the author’s inner life and his big ideas. Aubin writes as someone who sees personal experience, biblical history, environmental crisis, and technological possibility as parts of the same story. That’s why the book can move from reflections on telepathy and immortality into discussions of hydrogen, greenhouse gas removal, species recovery, and space travel without changing its tone. In his hands, those subjects belong together because they’re all part of one central effort to repair a damaged world.
The book is also full of purpose. The author isn’t circling around his themes or cautiously laying out options. He tells you exactly what he thinks the book is for. Early on, he writes, “I found my mission in life,” and that sense of mission never lets up. Later, he says, “This is a book that can help save the world.” Those lines are important because they explain the book’s voice. It’s direct, earnest, and completely committed to the idea that moral clarity and technical creativity should work side by side.
I found the environmental material especially revealing because it shows what kind of book this is at its core. The author isn’t only writing about belief. He’s trying to sketch systems, machines, and research paths that could, in his view, move the planet toward renewal. His interest in photosynthesis, air quality, water treatment, and cleaner energy makes the book feel constructive. There’s a strong impulse here toward design and repair. The author wants a world where science is used not just to increase power, but to restore balance, protect life, and push civilization toward something more durable.
This book attempts to gather everything that matters to its author into one place and give it direction. It’s a book of ideas, but it’s also a book of conviction. The author is trying to define what healing the Earth would mean, what living rightly would require, and what kind of future humanity should be building. That gives the book its identity. It’s a restoration project in prose, written by someone who believes the world can still be remade if conscience, invention, and responsibility are brought back into alignment.
Pages: 143
