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A Review of Lost in Time: Our Forgotten and Vanishing Knowledge, by Jack R. Bialik

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  (Maitland, FL: Mill City Press, 2024). ISBN: 979-8-8685-0229-3 I’m going to start this review with a question. How secure is humankind’s accumulated knowledge? Take a moment to think about it—the oldest known cuneiform tablets are approximately 5400 years old. The cave paintings in Lascaux might be as old as 22,000 years old. Yet, for all of our supposed technological sophistication, VHS tapes and audio cassettes degrade after 30 years, a DVD may last a century (we won’t know until we know), and floppy disks only last 15 years (although they are useless unless you collect and have the expertise to maintain older computers and disk drives). Consider as well that digital files are susceptible to corruption, being accidentally deleted, or being made obsolete by new software. In the case of a massive solar flare, a great deal could be lost in the blink of an eye. These sobering facts and more are the core subjects of Jack Bialik’s impressively and expansively researched book on...
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“A Fascinating Story without the Lies”: A Review of Belle Starr: The Truth Behind the Wild West Legend, by Michael Wallis

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   (New York: Liveright Publishing, 2025). ISBN: 978-1-63149-477-2 Ever since her adventurous life and tragic murder by an unknown assailant on February 3, 1889, Myra Shirley (aka Belle Starr, the “Bandit Queen”) has occupied a central position in the pantheon of Wild West Outlaws—bloodthirsty, larger than life; hero to some, villain to others. The problem in Myra’s case is that most of what we have been told by the press, the entertainment industry, and a slew of biographers is somewhere between exaggeration and lies. Michael Wallis made it his mission to remedy this injustice as only this celebrated historian and author can. Belle Starr is several books in one… part biography, part multifamily genealogy, and part exploration of the sociopolitical landscape of America in the mid- to late 1800s, with impressive explications of the early history of Missouri, the US Civil War, the free and slave state border feuds, and the mythologies and realities of other Old West lumin...
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“The Mysterious Pyramids”: A Review of Pyramid Tech: The Physics, Chemistry, & Agro-Economics of the Ancients, by Ken Goudsward

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   (Prince George, BC, Canada: Dimensionfold Publishing, 2025). ISBN: 978-1-998395-21-7 In my back cover blurb for this book, I stated, “Ken Goudsward, who is steadily earning a place among the most respected researchers offering heavily researched, technology-based reinterpretations of ancient history, offers a salient, sensible set of explanations for the who, when, why, and how of one of Earth’s most enduring mysteries—the pyramids. From the wrongly mundane, to the genuinely compelling, to the recently ridiculous, Goudsward takes on prior theories and offers us solid, scholarly insights and eye-opening new hypotheses.” Having read this book a second time, I stand by this statement all the more. In 107 succinct, easy to understand pages, while providing abundant photos, diagrams of the interiors of several pyramids, and technical charts, Goudsward takes us through myriad mistaken information concerning pyramids around the world and offers his assessment of a handful of m...
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“Bonds in Blood and Oil”: A Review of Beneath Beauford Grove, by E. Denise Billups

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  (New York: Shivering Pond Publishing, 2025). ISBN: 9781088146774 It’s hard to believe it’s been nearly four years since I reviewed E. Denise Billups’s Civil War/modern era ghost story Tainted Harvest . Since that time, the author has written two more books in the series and fourteen overall. I’m delighted to have the opportunity to read and review her latest. Similar to Tainted Harvest , this book, Beneath Beauford Grove , is also a ghost story, although with significant additional paranormal and horror elements. It takes place in multiple timelines in three locations—Haiti (not long after the slave rebellion that gave Saint-Domingue its independence from France and a new name), the fictional Beauford Grove in Alabama (in the 1800s and forward to the present), and modern-day Boston. It’s in Boston that the book opens, where the protagonist, Evangeline (Eva), is a hematologist struggling with a desperate pediatric case that calls for equally desperate decisions. The story un...
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“A Centennial Celebration”: A Review of Jim Ross and Shellee Graham’s Route 66: The First 100 Years

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 (St. Louis, MO: Reedy Press, 2025), ISBN-13: 978-1-681065823 When considering the most well-known and impactful writers and photographers who chronicle Route 66—Jim Hinckley, Michael Wallis, Joe Sonderman, and Chery Eichar Jett, all of whom I have met and/or presented with—one must include Jim Ross and Shellee Graham. My introduction to the work of this husband–wife super-duo, about 18 months ago, happened as I was preparing a series of presentations on what I call “Supernatural 66.” As part of my research, I read their 2017 Secret Route 66: A Guide to the Weird, Wonderful, and Obscure . Two months ago, I was privileged to do a presentation about/as Cyrus Avery, “Father of the Mother Road,” at AAA RoadFest in Tulsa, where Jim and Shellee were also presenting and debuting Route 66: The First 100 Years . I was lucky enough to have a close friend gift me the book just before their presentation, which I very much enjoyed. Afterward, they were nice enough to personalize and autog...
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“Generational and Personal Traumas”: A Review of Sharon Heath’s invisible threads

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  (Deltona, FL: Thomas-Jacob Publishing, LLC, 2025), ISBN-13: 978-1-950750-58-0 For the past eight years, I have been inspired, challenged, and moved by the novels of Jungian analyst Sharon Heath. In February 2017, I was introduced to her most fascinating, provocative character, the neurodivergent, brilliant physicist Fleur Robins, who reminds me so much of my daughter, who was 18 at the time and who turned 26 today. Fleur has now appeared in four books, all of which I have read and reviewed, and I am looking forward to her further (cosmic) adventures. I have also read and reviewed a stand-alone novel from 2019 called Chasing Eve . In many ways, the clusters of characters (a mix of blood and chosen family) in Heath’s beautifully rendered, emotionally and socially complex novels, are akin to those in the films of Wes Anderson— Royal Tennenbaums most prevalently, especially in terms of invisible threads . As I have mentioned in previous reviews, there is such a broad spectrum ...
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“Ancient History Reexamined”: A Review of Journey Through the Origins of History by Tyrone Ellington

 (Dimensionfold Publishing, 2024). ISBN: 978-1-998395-15-6 Over the past several years, Dimensionfold Publishing has built a solid reputation for scholarly works that analyze ancient texts, myths, cultures, and the Bible from an array of eye-opening, alternative-narrative lenses. With a stable of authors that includes Rev. Michael Carter, Wallace Wagner Jr., and Ken Goudsward, Dimensionfold gives readers plenty to think about, girded by painstaking textual and contextual analysis and well-developed theories founded on years of scholarship. If you’re daunted by the idea of considering Sumerian, Babylonian, and Mesopotamian texts and the most challenging passages of the Bible through the lens of advanced civilizations and technology (gods and magic), but are interested in ancient history, religion, and the possibility of extraterrestrial life, Tyrone Ellington’s Journey Through the Origins of History is an excellent place to start. The use of journey here is twofold—meaning both...
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