It is a bizarre time we are navigating through. Have you ever seen anything like it? What happened and how did we get here? Allow me to shine a light up it. This is a collection of columns on the weirdest, funniest and most perverse events that have happened to us humans in the past two years of Trump, Brexit and the Poonado.

We are living in a day when countless multitudes have lost their way both morally and spiritually. Like a ship without anchor, this last day's generation is being tossed to and fro by a flood of deception and wrong influences that is tragically causing people to lose their moorings. What should we do to make sure we don't get...

Uncle John’s latest compendium of the most bizarre and entertaining information imaginable: a Worldwide Weird-opedia! Good news: It’s not you, the world really is going crazy! And Uncle John is barely sane enough to guide you through it all in this whirlwind tour of all things strange and weird. Yes, loyal Throne Room readers, these 432 all-new pages of pure crazy will shock and confound you . . . and make your side split open from laughing. (Uncle John takes no legal responsibilities for split sides.) So fire up your egg-beater, strap on your tinfoil hat, and plunge on into . . . * The secret government plot to poison Earth’s skies * Animal-human hybrids and what role they’ll have in society * “Sexy Finding Nemo” and other inappropriate Halloween costumes * A cow that eats chicken, therapeutic snake massages, and killer kangaroos * The lady who married the Eiffel Tower, and the man who hugs and kisses his car * Enjoying the world’s craziest festivals, where you can eat fried lamb testicles, ride on a ship through the desert, or pierce your skin with a bicycle * Jackasses who copied Jackass and barely lived to tell about it * How to tell if you have Exploding Head Syndrome * Decoding the Mayan Prophecy * Clergy gone wild, and much much more!

IN THIS SWEEPING, monumental work of American history,journalist Michael J. Ybarra tells the story of Senator PatMcCarran's extraordinary career for the first time, and he vividlyre-creates a passionate era of politics that reshaped America andechoes to this day. Brilliantly researched and energeticallywritten, Washington Gone Crazy makes a significant newcontribution to our understanding of the United States in thetwentieth century.McCarran was one of the most shrewd and powerful--andvindictive--lawmakers ever to sit in Congress. Joe McCarthygave his name to the cause of zealous anti-Communism, but itwas McCarran, a lifelong Democrat, who actually wrote the laws,held the hearings, and bullied the State and Justice Departmentsinto doing his bidding. McCarran was consumed with looking forCommunists in Washington and his obsession almost consumedthe country.The son of illiterate Irish immigrants, McCarran was born in 1876in Nevada, where he grew up to be a sheepherder who taughthimself the law around the campfire, becoming a legendarydefense attorney and judge. After struggling for years against thelocal Democratic political machine, McCarran rode FranklinRoosevelt's landslide into the U.S. Senate in 1932--and brokeranks with Roosevelt during the New Deal's first week. But it wasPresident Harry Truman who would become McCarran's realnemesis. A master of parliamentary procedure, McCarran turnedhis Senate Judiciary Committee into a virtual government withinthe government. McCarran worked with J. Edgar Hoover toundermine the Truman Administration before McCarthy even gotto Washington. He created the most far-reaching anti-sedition lawever enacted in America (the McCarran Internal Security Act),which filled Ellis Island with immigrants alleged to be subversivesand set up concentration camps to hold suspected traitors in thecase of a national emergency. McCarran's Senate Internal SecuritySubcommittee cowed the State Department into sacrificing thecareers of diplomats accused of helping the Communists take overChina. McCarran virtually blackmailed more than one attorneygeneral into carrying out his policies. From Capitol Hill to theUnited Nations, from union halls to Hollywood, McCarran's wrathbroke careers and lives and ultimately, in a self-destructive fit ofpique, cost his party control of the Senate. Ybarra's even-handednarrative shows that McCarran was ultimately half right: Therereally were Communists in Washington--but it was the hunt forthem that did the real damage.

The classic samurai novel about the real exploits of the most famous swordsman. Miyamoto Musashi was the child of an era when Japan was emerging from decades of civil strife. Lured to the great Battle of Sekigahara in 1600 by the hope of becoming a samurai—without really knowing what it meant—he regains consciousness after the battle to find himself lying defeated, dazed and wounded among thousands of the dead and dying. On his way home, he commits a rash act, becomes a fugitive and brings life in his own village to a standstill—until he is captured by a weaponless Zen monk. The lovely Otsu, seeing in Musashi her ideal of manliness, frees him from his tortuous punishment, but he is recaptured and imprisoned. During three years of solitary confinement, he delves into the classics of Japan and China. When he is set free again, he rejects the position of samurai and for the next several years pursues his goal relentlessly, looking neither to left nor to right. Ever so slowly it dawns on him that following the Way of the Sword is not simply a matter of finding a target for his brute strength. Continually striving to perfect his technique, which leads him to a unique style of fighting with two swords simultaneously, he travels far and wide, challenging fighters of many disciplines, taking nature to be his ultimate and severest teacher and undergoing the rigorous training of those who follow the Way. He is supremely successful in his encounters, but in the Art of War he perceives the way of peaceful and prosperous governance and disciplines himself to be a real human being He becomes a reluctant hero to a host of people whose lives he has touched and been touched by. And, inevitably, he has to pit his skill against the naked blade of his greatest rival. Musashi is a novel in the best tradition of Japanese story telling. It is a living story, subtle and imaginative, teeming with memorable characters, many of them historical. Interweaving themes of unrequited love, misguided revenge, filial piety and absolute dedication to the Way of the Samurai, it depicts vividly a world Westerners know only vaguely. Full of gusto and humor, it has an epic quality and universal appeal. The novel was made into a three-part movie by Director Hiroshi Inagai. For more information, visit the Shopping area

A retired Los Angeles homicide detective living in a rural Wisconsin town, Jack Sawyer is called in to assist the local police chief in solving a gruesome series of murders that causes Jack to experience inexplicable waking nightmares.

The Coretta Scott King Award–winning Gone Crazy in Alabama by Newbery Honor and New York Times bestselling author Rita Williams-Garcia tells the story of the Gaither sisters as they travel from the streets of Brooklyn to the rural South for the summer of a lifetime. Delphine, Vonetta, and Fern are off to Alabama to visit their grandmother Big Ma and her mother, Ma Charles. Across the way lives Ma Charles’s half sister, Miss Trotter. The two half sisters haven’t spoken in years. As Delphine hears about her family history, she uncovers the surprising truth that’s been keeping the sisters apart. But when tragedy strikes, Delphine discovers that the bonds of family run deeper than she ever knew possible. Powerful and humorous, this companion to the award-winning One Crazy Summer and P.S. Be Eleven will be enjoyed by fans of the first two books, as well as by readers meeting these memorable sisters for the first time. Readers who enjoy Christopher Paul Curtis's The Watsons Go to Birmingham and Jacqueline Woodson’s Brown Girl Dreaming will find much to love in this book. Rita Williams-Garcia's books about Delphine, Vonetta, and Fern can also be read alongside nonfiction explorations of American history such as Jason Reynolds's and Ibram X. Kendi's books. Each humorous, unforgettable story in this trilogy follows the sisters as they grow up during one of the most tumultuous eras in recent American history, the 1960s. Read the adventures of eleven-year-old Delphine and her younger sisters, Vonetta and Fern, as they visit their kin all over the rapidly changing nation—and as they discover that the bonds of family, and their own strength, run deeper than they ever knew possible. “The Gaither sisters are an irresistible trio. Williams-Garcia excels at conveying defining moments of American society from their point of view.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review) Coretta Scott King Award winner * ALA Notable Book * School Library Journal Best Book of the Year * Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year * ALA Booklist Editors’ Choice * Shelf Awareness Best Book of the Year * Washington Post Best Books of the Year * The Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books Blue Ribbon Book * Three starred reviews * CCBC Choice * New York Public Library 100 Titles for Reading and Sharing * Amazon Best Book of the Year

A WORLD GONE CRAZY Synopsis The story begins with a retired member of a highly specialized, very small elite government tactical organization, which specialized in altering governments and national economies by crippling or death to inactivate organization leaders. Members used nothing more than common, readily available materials and rarely, imported biologicals, to achieve their goals while posed as innocuous individuals on various trade missions. When he retired, his government abandoned him, and Zeke, in his pursuit of funding to continue his education began a simple journey to Florida in hopes of receiving financial help from his only surviving relative now running his fathers business. The simple journey becomes a complex case of intrigue leading from Newark, New Jersey to Fort Lauderdale, Florida then on to a unique island off the coast of Cuba as Zeke again becomes involved with his past in the pursuit of his woman. The appearance of biologically engineered assault weapons, manufactured by the U.S. government, in violation of international law and falling into the hands of Cuban patriots and Arab terrorists further complicate the life of a man wishing to fade into oblivion. Unknowingly to him, politics becomes a factor as he enlists the aid of a past cohort, a beautiful woman with an insatiable sexual appetite, who, unknowingly to him, is still in the government service. In their travels through Cuba, posing as husband and wife, they selectively eliminate a Cuban official on their governments behalf. With the task accomplished, the trip, which is now to be purely pleasure, truly unfolds as a covertly assigned mission of destroying the Cuban sugar industry and bringing the island economy to its knees. With the aid of Helena, a mysterious Italian heiress, Zeke learns the true purpose of his mission and his being used by his government to destroy the innocent people of Cuba. A decision must be made; Zeke then uses his training and intelligence to begin to right an injustice he purposely but unknowingly caused. In the end, all, but Zeke, get their just rewards and a new chapter seems to be beginning.

This acclaimed post-apocalyptic novel of hope and terror from an award-winning author "pairs well with 1984 or The Handmaid's Tale" and includes a foreword by N. K. Jemisin (John Green, New York Times). When global climate change and economic crises lead to social chaos in the early 2020s, California becomes full of dangers, from pervasive water shortage to masses of vagabonds who will do anything to live to see another day. Fifteen-year-old Lauren Olamina lives inside a gated community with her preacher father, family, and neighbors, sheltered from the surrounding anarchy. In a society where any vulnerability is a risk, she suffers from hyperempathy, a debilitating sensitivity to others' emotions. Precocious and clear-eyed, Lauren must make her voice heard in order to protect her loved ones from the imminent disasters her small community stubbornly ignores. But what begins as a fight for survival soon leads to something much more: the birth of a new faith . . . and a startling vision of human destiny.

Black-robed priests roam the countryside with shotguns. The Green Legionnaires break into houses. Acid rains ruin the forest of America, as hordes of refugees from the desolate northern cities travel south for the most terrible of winters. For Arthur Ferrier and his family, the pleasant town of South Haven has long been home. But what was once so familiar and comfortable has now been dissolved into a frightening strangeness. The local newspaper stops delivering, the power fails, and then come the food riots and the closing of the hospitals. For reasons no one really seems to understand, the centers of civilized life are breaking apart all around them. But Arthur remembers his father’s dream, and he fingers the key around his neck—a key that opens a lock to a door far away in the northern mountains, a place where he and Marilyn, his wife, hope to live and raise their children in peace. Thus begins the odyssey of the Ferrier family as they pursue their last hope: the safe haven prepared by a wise grandfather. It is a journey filled with adventure, peril, and desperate faith. And One Hundred Times to China is a novel of terror, courage, and one family’s fight for survival with life’s greatest gift as its only weapon—their love for one another.