Tag Archives: audiobooks

Fugitivism by S. Charles Bolton

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Fugitivism: Escaping Slavery in the Lower Mississippi Valley, 1820-1860 By S. Charles Bolton
  • Estimated Length:  10.5 hours
  • Project Budget:  Royalty Share
  • Word Count:  98000
  • Language:  English
  • Distribution:  Exclusive
  • Territories:  World

Winner, 2020 Booker Worthen Literary Prize

During the antebellum years, over 750,000 enslaved people were taken to the Lower Mississippi Valley, where two-thirds of them were sold in the slave markets of New Orleans, Natchez, and Memphis. Those who ended up in Louisiana found themselves in an environment of swamplands, sugar plantations, French-speaking creoles, and the exotic metropolis of New Orleans. Those sold to planters in the newly-opened Mississippi Delta cleared land and cultivated cotton for owners who had moved west to get rich as quickly as possible, driving this labor force to harsh extremes.

Like enslaved people all over the South, those in the Lower Mississippi Valley left home at night for clandestine parties or religious meetings, sometimes “laying out” nearby for a few days or weeks. Some of them fled to New Orleans and other southern cities where they could find refuge in the subculture of slaves and free blacks living there, and a few attempted to live permanently free in the swamps and forests of the surrounding area. Fugitives also tried to return to eastern slave states to rejoin families from whom they had been separated. Some sought freedom on the northern side of the Ohio River; others fled to Mexico for the same purpose.

Fugitivism provides a wealth of new information taken from advertisements, newspaper accounts, and court records. It explains how escapees made use of steamboat transportation, how urban runaways differed from their rural counterparts, how enslaved people were victimized by slave stealers, how conflicts between black fugitives and the white people who tried to capture them encouraged a culture of violence in the South, and how runaway slaves from the Lower Mississippi Valley influenced the abolitionist movement in the North.

Readers will discover that along with an end to oppression, freedom-seeking slaves wanted the same opportunities afforded to most Americans.

New audiobook release coming November 2021!

RAVE REVIEWS: Crystal Empire!

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The Crystal Kingdom, now Empire

John M. Olsen maintains his world as he moves the characters forward. Through the other two books and Crystal Empire they all continue to grow and learn and change. He shows that through ingenuity, adverse circumstances can be faced and overcome with results that are helpful to all involved.

Crystal Empire brings more depth to the characters surrounding the king and queen. There are many more viewpoints as this part of the story unfolds. Many characters from the earlier volumes return to continue sharing from their perspectives. This brings more depth to them. New characters are introduced to add to the complexity of the story, as it should be during a time of war. The richness of this book comes from the variety of voices that tell their parts to bring the story to its climactic conclusion.

There is still more story of the Crystal Kingdoms, now Empire. Mr. Olsen has left us enough threads to see that the fabric of the story has not yet been completely unraveled. I do not know if he plans on continuing to tell stories in this setting. If he does they will be welcomed additions. If not, there is room for our personal imaginations to grab ahold of one of those threads and see where it leads us.

This is a wonderful conclusion that started with Crystal King when we are introduced to Garvin before he is even a baron, and his unpredictable rise (link to review). The story continued fluidly into Crystal Queen. In this book, we learn more about Lilia and what she had gone through in her life to be trained to be the heir apparent of the Graven kingdom (link to review).

The books are written for young adult readers. They are appropriate for any readers who may have concerns about the content of the story. There is enough intrigue to keep more experienced readers engaged and still be light enough to provide a relaxing read at the end of the day.
If you have enjoyed John M. Olsen’s other works or similar material from Immortal Works publishing you will enjoy this one.
Crystal Empire is published by Immortal Works.

About the Author (from the book)

JOHN M. OLSEN

Motivated by his lifelong love of reading, John M. Olsen writes about ordinary people doing extraordinary things and hopes to entertain and inspire others. His father’s library started him on this journey as a teenager, and he now owns and expands that library to pass his passion on to the next generation of avid readers.

He loves to create things, whether writing novels or short stories or working in his secret lab equipped with dangerous power tools. In all cases, he applies engineering principles and processes to the task at hand, often in unpredictable ways. He usually prefers “Renaissance Man” to “Mad Scientist” as a goal and aesthetic.

He lives in Utah with his lovely wife and a variable number of mostly grown children and a constantly changing subset of extended family.
You can join John’s musings at his blog: johnmolsen.blogspot.com.

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NEW RELEASE: Crystal Empire

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CRYSTAL EMPIRE

King Gavin Stoutheart and his council face war like the world hasn’t seen in ages. The enemy kings will soon lay waste to the countryside, and it is up to Gavin to fight with the tools given to him to avoid destruction. 

While gathering his forces for war, Gavin must also work through unexpected ambassadors, secrets among his closest allies, and hidden clues from the past within the Riland Capital to avoid repeating the mistakes of those who preceded him. 

While an abundance of crystals helps Gavin’s army to control more war animals and to speed training, nothing ever goes as planned while defending against the remaining four Crystal Kings. The enemy has surprises of their own as they seek to overwhelm and crush Gavin and his allies.

©2019 John M. Olsen (P)2020 Immortal Works

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REVIEW: The Christian Moral Life

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Rasmussen, Hans C.The Catholic Library World; Pittsfield Vol. 88, Iss. 2,  (Dec 2017): 113.

An academic textbook promising “directions for the journey to happiness” must be an odd outrider in a genre that typically explains bland technical subjects with dispassionate, often tedious prose. Such is the peculiar case with this introduction to Catholic moral theology from John Rziha, professor of theology at Benedictine College (Atchison, Kansas).

While it exhibits all the formal organization, diligent comprehensiveness, and (at times) even plodding language of a common school textbook, the attainment of both natural and eternal happiness really is the unerring focus of this book. Rziha defines moral theology as “the study of how humans attain eternal happiness through loving union with God by performing their proper actions with the aid of God’s grace” (2). So, throughout his nineteen carefully argued chapters, Rziha never loses sight of this ultimate goal of happiness or the essential human need for loving relationships with God and other people.

AUDIOBOOK COMING IN
JUNE 2020

The text is organized into two parts with the second building upon the first.”Moral Theology in General” covers the subjects essential to the discipline: human nature, sanctifying grace, the four types of laws, the practice of virtue, the nature of sin, the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and other salient points.

“The Individual Virtues and Laws” takes a deeper look into the three theological and four cardinal virtues, including specific sub-virtues, related gifts of the Holy Spirit, relevant commandments, and sins that oppose each virtue.

Rziha always writes in accessible language to convey deep philosophical and theological ideas to the uninitiated, as well as explain a handful of unavoidable specialized terms. He also fills the text with friendly illustrative examples of fictitious men and women facing moral dilemmas over commonplace issues with school, work, family, faith, and vocation.

The Christian Moral Life is a sound introductory textbook on the complexities of moral theology. Despite its relatively simple language and unwavering focus on human happiness as the central subject of moral theology, the text can understandably be difficult to follow at times.

“…humans attain eternal happiness through loving union with God..”

JOHN RZIHA

The complex interrelations among various steps of human actions, virtues, laws, gifts, and beatitudes can be challenging to piece together properly. This is, after all, a text on moral theology and not a self-help book, so readers must be ready to slow to a crawl at times to comprehend the richness of Catholic moral thought.

COMING IN JUNE 2020

The Christian Moral Life will be a valuable textbook for libraries and teachers educating undergraduate and graduate students in theology, but its many grammatical errors will need to be corrected if it ever goes into a second edition.

Hans C. Rasmussen

“Moving Up, Moving Out” by Will Cooley

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COMING APRIL 2020!

In Moving Up, Moving Out, Will Cooley discusses the damage racism and discrimination have exacted on black Chicagoans in the twentieth century while accentuating the resilience of upwardly-mobile African Americans.

Cooley examines how class differences created fissures in the black community and produced quandaries for black Chicagoans interested in racial welfare. While black Chicagoans engaged in collective struggles, they also used individualistic means to secure the American Dream.

Black Chicagoans demonstrated their talent and ambitions, but they entered through the narrow gate, and whites denied them equal opportunities in the educational institutions, workplaces, and neighborhoods that produced the middle class. African Americans resisted these restrictions at nearly every turn by moving up into better careers and moving out into higher-quality neighborhoods, but their continued marginalization helped create a deeply dysfunctional city.

Lecture by Will Cooley

African Americans settled in Chicago for decades, inspired by the gains their forerunners were making in the city. Though faith in Chicago as a land of promise wavered, the progress of the black middle class kept the city from completely falling apart.

In this important study, Cooley shows how Chicago, in all of its glory and faults, was held together by black dreams of advancement. 

Moving Up, Moving Out will appeal to urban historians and sociologists, scholars of African American studies, and general readers interested in Chicago and urban history.

Narrated by Andrew L. Barnes

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