Book Reviews

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In Tears and Blood

New Novel Tells the Fascinating Account of a Rebel Soldier in Liberia's Civil Wars

Lawrenceville, NJ “ (August 16, 2006) A boy's life in Liberia is shattered by a civil war that tears apart this West African country, his parents murdered before his very eyes. Driven by revenge, he joins a rebel army, becoming a refugee when the rebellion is defeated. Is it too late to reclaim the peace he once had as a boy? Follow his account in a story of undying hope in a world of unlimited horror in the intriguing novel In Tears and Blood by author Emmanuel Clarke.

This book is the first account of a soldier fighting in the Liberian civil wars. It is one of the very few books written about the strife in Liberia, a country of great Black American interest because of its history of being founded by former American slaves. Although it is fiction, In Tears and Blood was partly inspired by the author's experiences while growing up in Liberia, West Africa. It contains a distinctive look at the racism within the black community ' how different sects of Black Liberians persecute and hate other sects of Black Liberians.

Clarke is the first Liberian writer to masterfully craft the Liberian crisis into something that is both educationally entertaining and emotionally pulse pounding. This unique first-person account of a boy caught in a man's war, portrays how the strife in Liberia has affected the moral fabric of this struggling country. Yet despite all this, hope and faith can still rise above terror and evil. Readers will be glued to the pages of this fascinating story and will even be left breathless long after reading this amazing novel.

To learn more about this book, log on to www.emmanuelclarke.com

About the Author
Born against the backdrop of war and civil strife in Liberia, Emmanuel Clarke fled to neighboring Sierre Leone, where he began his writing career in the late 1990s as a reporter for “Footprints' newspaper in Freetown. In 1998, he came to the United States to join his mother who had emigrated to Hightstown, N.J., a few years earlier. He continued to write short stories while pursuing a college degree, and ultimately earned an AAS in Computer Programming from Mercer County Community College and a BS in Engineering from the New Jersey Institute of Technology. Currently residing in Lawrenceville, N.J., is employed as a management information systems coordinator for a company in Princeton, N.J., does business consulting in IT and is an adjunct professor at Mercer County Community College. In his free time he writes fiction and non-fiction and is choir director at a local Lutheran Church in Trenton, and has ghost written several short stories and memoirs.

In Tears and Blood * by Emmanuel Clarke
Growing Up With Rebels
Trade Paperback; $22.99; 316 pages; 1-59926-926-0; Cloth Hardback; $32.99; 316 pages; 1-59926-927-9;

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Book synopsis

Raymond returns to his native Liberia, hopeful that with a new president in command that country would finally know peace and prosperity, but he is haunted by a childhood in which he was surrounded by war and killing, tears and blood.

He recalls coming of age very quickly during Liberia's seemingly endless era of bloody civil strife. At the age of six, he witnesses the violent rape of his mother by unknown gunmen during a government coup in which his father is taken captive.
Mixed political sentiments clash at home. His mother, Martha, brainwashes him into believing that the Americans (mainly former U.S. President Jimmy Carter) are responsible for Liberia's mayhem. Conversely, Raymond's father, Fred, a successful businessman and top civilian advisor to the Liberian government, disputes his mother's claim.

As civil war erupts, young Raymond tries to understand what turns neighbor against neighbor. When his entire family is murdered, he vows revenge. Unknowingly, his father's murderer adopts Raymond and makes him a soldier. In yet another ironic twist, Raymond ultimately comes face to face with the man his mother had taught him to hate, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter.

A Review of Malaria in Sub-Sahara Africa
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Liberia Smiles

Congratulations Shoana Cachelle on the publication of your recently released book Liberia Smiles....

The book gives a pictorial insight into what life is currently like in Liberia. Shoana took beautiful still shots of people and places, from different areas of the country, artistically arranged and presented them in this wonderful book.

The presentation is excellent, the colors vibrate, the message hopeful, and browsing the book, not only brought smiles to my face, but it left me aching to go home. Congratulations again and thanks for giving the world this wonderful book on Africa. You can get more information on Liberia Smiles by visiting Shoana Chachelle web site. ~ Ciata Victor

Through The Valley of the Shadow of Death

by Levi C. Williams

This book is not only about the brutal civil war in the West African Republic of Liberia, it is especially about how the Church in Liberia became involved in the peace process at a tremendous cost. This is a true story of what Christians can do in times of conflict, and of one minister whose faith and courage helped him survive as he made his way out of Liberia's capital, Monrovia, and traveled through the "valley of the shadow of death". The book ends on a note of hope for Liberia.

Levi C. Williams is a United Methodist minister. Originally from Liberia, West Africa, he received graduate degrees from Perkins School of Theology, SMU, in Dallas, and from Candler School of Theology at Emory University in Atlanta. Levi was dean and professor of theology and ethics at the Gbarnga School of Theology in Liberia. He is currently developing a peacebuilding, conflict management and reconciliation project, of which this book is the second of three stages of the project. Levi is co-author with Sister Mary Laurene Browne, OSF, of the book Joseph Jenkins Roberts: Our President, Our Father, published by Herald Publishing Inc. in Liberia. He is the author of Peacebuilding Is a Mission Mandate, published by Xulon Press. Levi lives in Indiana with his family.

ISBN 1-59781-408-3

PRICE: $13.99 a copy.

Purchase from: www.amazon.com
www.xulonpress.com

or from the author at: lcw22001@yahoo.com. Send money order only. Please include $1.50 for postage. Thanks.

Mirror of a Mind

by Byll Johnson

260 pages; perfect bound;

catalogue #03-1110; ISBN 1-4120-0742-9;

US$21.29,

C$27.00,

EUR17.55, £12.16

About the Book

This is not just poetry, it is a journey.This tells a message of our mind as an individual or a group. It focuses on the connections that are share unknowingly with our human race through feeling of disappointments, joy, heartaches and failures. Yes, it is a mirror. Reading it takes path, a journey that has been seen or travel by you or someone so dear to you. It reflects the past and maybe the future that is to come in ones life. Each word or phrase expresses life as it should be seen and not by what is seen of life. Journey yourself as you see what really lies within a mirror of life's journey.

"This book is an incentive for inspection, introspection, initiative and reinventing oneself."
-Dr. Nicholas K. Nicol, Theologian

"Through poetry, thoughts and inspiration, Byll has written a down to earth book for daily meditation." -Rev. Edward Tetteh, SVD

Click here to order your copy of this very interesting book by Byll Johnson

About the Author

Byll Johnson is the fourth of five children. He lost his father at the age of nine and his mother at the age of 39. His friends affectionately know him as Byll. At work he is called William. He attended the Wells-Hairston High School in Monrovia, Liberia. He graduated from Mercer County Community College. His interest in poetry began at an early age. His outlook to nature is that of beauty. People within his reach, their actions and reaction of life and their life inspired energy that he transmits into word of poetry. This development he uses to help focus the minds of others to the not so hidden messages within his phrases of magic words.

His personal life and living also inspire him. Byll has been blessed with four children. He is a loving, caring and friendly father. But will not think twice to point out his dislikes at any time. Byll is a very good listener and observer. These are just two of his many qualities. He is a loving, open-minded and very fun person to know and be around. By nature he is quiet and very affectionate.

Education and Social Change in Liberia: New Perspectives for the 21st Century

A New and Intellectually Provocative Book!

BY: Tarnue Johnson

This book could not have come at a very serious and critical moment in the political and social history of Liberia. After fourteen years of dwelling in the doldrums and a state of what a sociologist would aptly describe as anomie; and others would yet appropriately describe as self-destruction, the country is now attempting to draw lines under the sand-by engaging in a total overhaul-through the assiduous efforts of the international community and well-meaning citizens. It is worth noting that perhaps these changes speak to the dawning of a new era where new regimes of peace and stability would be secured.

However, it is crucial to note that such political retooling, course correction, and social reengagement with our most pertinent challenges must assume specific forms and flavors. One is hard-pressed and reasonably skeptical to believe nowadays given recent disturbances in Liberia that the acceptance of a comprehensible, meaningful and peaceful solution to our problems has now become irreversible. There are many signs on the horizon that indicate that this process could be unraveled. Having said that, it is not difficult to see that there seems to be a blinker of hope and light at the end of the tunnel after a prolonged period of economic and political decline. But, from past historical experiences, one knows that the success of a genuine process of redefinition and reconstitution depends on the patterns of institutional development adopted from hereon. I have had what you might call a unique opportunity to air my views through various news organs, both community based and international, as well as peer-reviewed professional journals in the last couple of years particularly since my residence in the United States.

But in this book I now have an added opportunity to weave together the various themes that have constituted my focus of analysis. In other words, I take delight in the fact that I now have the opportunity to present my views in a more coherent, aggregated, consequential and deliberative fashion. Through my studies and experience of working with alternative paradigms and systems of learning, I am privileged to report that I have, indeed, become more and more convinced through experience and insight that our attempts to fashion viable institutional alternatives for civil dialogue and social change must be situated in the very nature of human rationality and discourse. In a philosophical theory of modernity, there is a case to be made that reason, as a guide to action, cannot be devoid of the centrality of language. This presumption presupposes that the centrality of language in the discourse of modernity signals a shift away from a classical preoccupation with the philosophy of consciousness grounded in subjective reason and speculative self-reflection-- to a place where power free communication becomes the seat of reason and grounding of all normative considerations (see White, 1995).

The pragmatic content of reason reveals itself more powerfully in processes of speech acts and communicative action, which in turn leads to self-determination and social emancipation. This is particularly so because meaning, which lies at the heart of any meaningful project of social change, is constructed in the process of dialogue. Thus the centrality of language in this new discourse of modernity and what I would called "reconstructive science" verifies the axiomatic assumption that most human intellectual functions and productive activity are impossible to realize without the most basic foundations in linguistic expression manifested in the domains of various species of speech acts.

On this very particular count the logics, basic premises and primary theoretical pillars of various schools of philosophy and social science; such as those of Hegel's, Max Weber's and Marx's positivism fall short in terms of the insight they offered into the workings of sociopolitical institutions and other pertinent challenges of our contemporary world. A significant contention embodied in this formulation is that all human institutions including the state and civil society are constructed in specific contexts of learning and inter-subjective communication. This understanding suggests that the lifeblood of an open and progressive society is free communication without the distorting and corrosive influence of what I have called personal and non-institutional power in my analysis. There is a counter-subjective element embedded in the ideal of a community of communicative actors. Thus, in a society of free communicators, reason becomes re-embedded in its proper social and historical context.

This follows that I would be inclined to query protestations against the positing of a structural linkage between critical rationality and practical discourse in so far as the determination of an acceptable rational foundation for our ideas, norms and practices are concerned. I am of the view that through the actualization of reason and its most salient categorical imperatives, we achieve our humanity and our strivings for higher ethical, intellectual and spiritual ideals. In this view, I would profess that I have built upon the historical and epistemological foundations laid down by earlier social theorists particularly in the fields of criticism and modern democratic theory. I would also profess that I have been inspired a great deal by the practical and inspiring heroics of our native Liberian forerunners and antecedents in the fight for social and participatory democracy, which of course includes the late Albert Porte.

Consequently, the basic rationale of this book follows from the assumption that the necessary conditions for free full participation in rational discourse do not exist in Liberia, given the institutional and psychosocial constraints that have existed in the country. I have argued that the lack of full participation in free discourse has distorted the growth of a viable democratic tradition and competent civil governance. It is further suggested, as evidenced throughout the chapters and sections of this book, that these institutional and psychosocial factors are the resultant of the evolution of authority relations in the Liberian society since the 19th century, when the various micro collectivities in the sub-region were usurped under the rubric of a somewhat homogeneous republic and social system.

More specifically, the views expressed in this book broadly fall within the area of adult education research and theory suggested by Taylor and others. Taylor (1998) has suggested the need to foster strategies of transformative learning and social action in varied contexts, taking into consideration socio-cultural and historical forces. Other authors have also variously contributed to this theme, including the earlier generation of critical theorists and their followers such as Jungen Habermas, Paulo Friere, Jack Mezirow, Stephen Brookfield, Donald Schon, Chris Agyris, etc. I have adopted a variety of conceptual tools in this book to gauge the behavior of adults in institutional and bureaucratic systems, because it is adults who principally organized and run these systems. The character of these institutions as they exist in Liberia, ultimately reflects the personalities and attitudes of their authors, who happen to be adult members of society. Thus, the failure of these systems is as much reflective of a moral and political failure of adults in society.

Because adult participants are affected by mores and ethics of these systems in as much as they shape them on the basis of their particular normative orientations and expectations, a prior assumption critical to an organizing disposition is that institutional and bureaucratic systems, including civil society organizations, are essentially learning systems that can utilize the potential embedded in the structure of human rationality and communication such as critical reflection, dialectical thinking, epistemic cognition etc. This book has six chapters and it ends by making several salient recommendations for policy action to curb the current malaise in Liberian education, political and social culture and organizing practices and principles. The tone of the book overall encapsulates an underlying call to streamline a blotted and decrepit national bureaucracy as we have in Liberia, to make it more efficient, modern and prone to permeable and dialectical approaches to solving complex problems of post-conflict and institutional development.

Purchasing Information

Publishers: Author House Publishing/ www.authorhouse.com 1663 Liberty Drive, Suite 200 Bloomington, IN 47403. Author House Price $11.50 plus shipping and handling = $17.50

Retail Price through Amazon.com, Barnes and Nobles etc. = $14.95 plus shipping and handling

About the author:
Tarnue Johnson is an educational specialist and researcher. He has written extensively in the fields of education and political studies. His articles have covered topics in the political economy of education, instructional design and evaluation of adult education, learning theories and discourse analysis. The author once served as a Social Science Lecturer at the Manchester City College in Manchester England. He currently works as a counselor for a premier youth organization based in Chicago, in the United States. He is also an Adjunct Professor in the General Education and Liberal Arts Department at the International Academy of Design and Technology also based in Chicago, Illinois in the United States.