Paul Spencer Sochaczewski

Announcing a new edition of Paul’s classic “campfire conversations” with Alfred Russel Wallace: An Inordinate Fondness for Beetles

Special ebook launch price of 99 cents through May 2, 2017
(paperback also available—see below for ordering information)

Sochaczewski, who spent more than forty years following Wallace in Southeast Asia, has created an innovative form of storytelling, combining incisive biography and personal travelogue. He examines themes about which Wallace cared deeply—women’s power, why boys leave home, the need to collect, our relationship with other species, humanity’s need to control nature and how this leads to nature destruction, arrogance, the role of ego and greed, white-brown and brown-brown colonialism, serendipity, passion, mysticism—and interprets them through his own filter with layers of humor, history, social commentary, adventure, and provocative personal observations.

This revised edition includes an expanded chapter on the Wallace-Darwin controversy; a new chapter on the search for Ali, Wallace’s “faithful companion”; an elegant, easy-to-read layout; and new insights about our need/fear relationship with nature.

Critical Praise:

“The feeling I got reading An Inordinate Fondness for Beetles was as if I had boarded a time machine to accompany Wallace as he marveled at and studied the natural wonders of Southeast Asia. The book is a revelation of Wallace’s mesmerizing natural history insights interwoven with Sochaczewski’s unique view of the world and our place in it.”

“This book occupies a new category of nonfiction—part personal travelogue, part incisive biography of Wallace, part unexpected traveler’s tales—which coalesce into an illuminating, sometimes irreverent, and always entertaining volume. And running through the book is a deep respect for the natural world that Wallace and Sochaczewski spent years exploring.”
—Jeffrey Sayer, professor of conservation and development at James Cook University

“Simultaneously funny, sardonic, and insightful. Sochaczewski isn’t afraid to shake Wallace’s pedestal once in a while, and doesn’t take himself too seriously either. I particularly like its unusual thematic structure … The book is like a pizza with everything … entirely new and refreshing.”
—Jim Thorsell, senior advisor to the Unesco World Heritage  Convention

“The rhythm and magic of a verbal fugue. Read, laugh, and ponder the uncertain future of the people and wildlife in this gloriously biodiverse archipelago.”
—Dato Sri Gathorne, author of Mammals of Borneo

“Explores the very basis of what science should be all about, and which Sochaczewski explores in his conversations with Wallace—a curiosity-driven “splendid madness” to understand our natural world at all costs.”  
—Peter K.L. Ng, professor and head of Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum, National University of Singapore

“Important, fun, and thought-provoking.” 
—Natarajan Ishwaran, director of ecological and earth sciences at UNESCO

“Woven around the adventures of Alfred Russel Wallace and of the author, An Inordinate Fondness for Beetles is a fascinating view of culture, biology, and nature conservation in both historic as well as contemporary Malaysia, Indonesia, and Singapore. Wallace, the unsung co-discoverer of revolution, is brought to life in a new and informative way here.”
—Sir Ghillean Prance, former president of the Linnean Society and former director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew

Share Your Journey is an easy-to-use handbook for people who want to write their personal stories but aren’t sure how to start and how to make them interesting. It’s based on the writing workshops I’ve run in more than twenty countries.

You’ll learn the (surprisingly easy) techniques professional writers use to write personal memoirs and travel stories that connect with editors and readers. Some highlights:

• Recognize the dynamics of your own hero’s journey
• Create instant intimacy with the reader
• Tell the story by following the Little Red Riding Hood Strategy
• Create conflict with the Nancy Reagan Principle
• Write like Steven Spielberg directs
• Eliminate fluff like Michelangelo
• Keep ’em hanging on with the Scheherazade Scenario
• Invoke the Story of One to represent the Story of Many

“Share Your Journey is to good writing as Joy of Cooking is to good food. I wish all my students had this book before taking my writing classes; hell, I wish I had this book earlier in my career. It’s smart, fun, and every page contains nuggets of essential advice.”  
—Gary Goshgarian, professor of creative writing, Northeastern University

“Paul Sochaczewski learned his craft carefully over decades and he now shares the secrets to why he’s successful. He offers ten simple, but too often overlooked guidelines, them amply (and memorably) illustrates each one with samples from his own works and a library full of other writers demonstrating how easily it can be done.”  
—Jerry Hopkins, former editor of Rolling Stone, best-selling author of Elvis: The Biography and No One Here Gets Out Alive 

“Paul’s Ten Tips, buttressed by some great to-the-point examples, will stand among the best advice a nonfiction writer can ever hope to have.”  
—James Clad, former Far Eastern Economic Review bureau chief in Malaysia, India, the Philippines; author of Behind the Myth: Business, Money and Power in Southeast Asia

“If I had to parachute only one book to a Robinson Crusoe-type stranded on a deserted island who wanted to write his personal story, I have no doubt it would be Paul Sochaczewski’s Share Your Journey: Mastering Personal Writing. The toolkit Paul offers allows the person with a story and some raw talent to build a word castle that rises to the heavens.”  
—Christopher G. Moore, author of the Vincent Calvino novels and Heart Talk

“If you want … your writing to leap off the page and click its heels in mid-air, read this book and follow its good advice. This is a lifetime’s wisdom, offered by a pro.”  
—Thomas Bass, author of The Spy Who Loved Us, Vietnamerica, and The Predictors; professor of English and journalism at State University of New York