Featured Book
Curious Encounters of the Human Kind – Myanmar (Burma)
This is the first book in a five-book series of unusual (and true) personal travel tales. Within the first three days of the book’s publication it has become an Amazon best-seller in its category.
What do jumping cats have to do with Buddhism’s Middle Path? Did Orwell really hate everyone in Burma? How did Myanmar’s ruling junta use white elephants to consolidate their power? Will a synagogue caretaker’s improbable dream ever come true? What arrogance drives western travelers to seek the “unknown” in Myanmar’s Nagaland? And why should you never disrespect the nat spirits who guard a sacred forest?
Featured Photos
Featured Articles
DON’T SCOLD ME, I’M JUST ENJOYING AN ICE CREAM: How Western consumerism fuels rainforest destruction and kills orangutans
This short article is inspired by EarthLove. The book is fiction, the issues are real. DON’T SCOLD ME, I’M JUST ENJOYING AN ICE CREAM How Western consumerism fuels rainforest destruction and kills orangutans Enjoying that ice cream? With every delicious lick you’re killing orangutans. Rarely has a conservation problem been stated in such stark and […]
News & Events
Intro to a speculative biography of Ali
My speculative biography of Ali, Alfred Russel Wallace’s assistant, was honored as the Best Historical Book of 2024 by the United States Peace Corps Writers. Here’s an excerpt from the book’s introduction. Look Here, Sir, What a Curious Bird Intro to a speculative biography of Ali, Alfred Russel Wallace’s assistant in the Malay Archipelago […]
Alfred Russel Wallace and Things That Go Bump in the Night
Alfred Russel Wallace is best known for his scientific achievements — collecting and documenting hundreds of new species of “natural productions,” major insights into biogeography, island endemism, and cultural anthropology, and notably, his development of a theory of evolution by natural selection independently of and prior to that of Charles Darwin. But Wallace was also […]
Enhancing the Narrative
A historian quickly learns there is little absolute truth. The authors of personal memoirs and observer narratives enhance, misremember (sometimes deliberately), censor, and leave out chunks of information.
Rarely, though, do historians try to go beyond the facts and speculate on the emotions, intentions, and psychological motivations of their research subjects.
As a fun exercise, I’ve created several “imagined conversations” between Alfred Russel Wallace and his assistant Ali, based on tidbits of information and provocative clues found in Wallace’s narratives.