Philo has had a happy childhood, growing up along the Big Sur coastline in Pine Bluff, California. Life takes a turn for the perverse, however, when his hippie father, Harley, discovers the chemical compound for Blissful Living Love-Radiance of Infinite Divine Being. As self-experimenting Harley soon finds out, the new drug has some undesirable side effects: specifically, it turns people into roosters with an ungovernable lust for trees. When Harley escapes to the sensuous pleasures of the forest, vowing to never set foot on the ground again, Philo finds a surrogate father in Captain Nitt-Witt--the ancient, eccentric creator of the infamous folk art castle known as Nitt-Witt Ridge. During a summer apprenticeship with the Captain, Philo learns to practice Zen meditation and the manly art of trout fishing. But when a sanctimonious robo-rooster decides to wage a terrorist campaign against the citizens of Pine Bluff during the annual Helldorado Parade, it falls to Philo and the Captain to put an end to the violence by confronting the twisted family mystery that lurks behind the killer's chrome-plated beak."Crash Gordon delivers this unprecedented and extraordinary Zen koan-like novel with a voice as confident and alluring as the ancient Greek philosophers, but with much more humor.... Featuring an unpredictable cast of characters, this short but bittersweet psychedelic semi-autobiography is considerably more grassroots and elemental than anything by Richard Brautigan and is hipper, trippier, and trendier than Jakucho Setouchi. Listen... the flaming "crotch-o-lantern" is not the craziest thing you'll read about in this book, nor are the exploding canines, or the befeathered chrome-metallic serial-killer.... For all of these things and more I think you, yes you, should purchase a copy of Nitt-Witt Ridge today and devour it. In the process you'll become--something more than you were!"--The Alternative

An amnesiac convalescing in Big Sur encounters an oddly sinister envoy from the Freemasons' Scottish Rite Psychophrenic Research Program.... A stoned surfer trespassing on Hearst Castle property gets hauled up into the sky by a massive flying black triangle.... A notorious starlet attending the wrap party for her first major Hollywood movie assassinates a Moscow journalist with a bottle of radioactive nasal spray.... In Crash Gordon and the Revelations from Big Sur, Derek Swannson combines these elements into a comic and subversive international thriller. OCTOBER 1988: It's morning in America again. Ex-CIA Director George H. W. Bush is calling the shots as Vice President. Intelligence agency black budgets are on the rise. Ronald Reagan's trickle-down economics has been trickling upon the American populace for nearly eight years. It's been a non-stop champagne bash for the rich, who've become much richer, but for the middle class and the poor the trickling has acted like acidic piss, burning gaping holes in their social safety nets. Is the increase in suffering intentional? Gordon Swannson thinks so--and he has the metaphysics to prove it. Sort of. Fresh from a five-year resident scholar program at the Esalen Institute, Gordon (Crash to his friends) arrives in the sleepy seaside town of Cambria, California, to deliver a lecture titled "Galactic Loosh Farming and Reaganomics: How Much Longer Before the Fabric of Reality is Ripped to Shreds?" It's the start of a bizarre chain of events that will launch Gordon's career as an investigative journalist and entangle him with a cast of characters that includes: James Marrsden, a gleefully foul-mouthed radio DJ and Gordon's untrustworthy childhood best friend; Kayleigh Fuller, a stoner witch who happens to be the niece of Buckminster Fuller; Skeeze Lester Huntley, a porn-addicted surfer whose alien abduction inspired him to become the Dope King of Central California; Rina Rowley, a lovely young actress with a shockingly ugly past; and looming largest of all, James' morbidly obese and obscenely wealthy Uncle Lloyd, "super secret black-ops bagman for the medico-military-occult complex... and matchmaker." Determined to uncover the truth behind Lloyd's lurid tales of psychic killers and a mind control program known as Project MONARCH, Gordon chases down leads from Cambria to Amsterdam's red-light district and the Brussels headquarters of an alien-inspired sex cult calling itself The OAAD Institute--getting a profound education in the machinations behind the 20th century's greatest unexplained mysteries along the way. Seeking the final piece to the puzzle, Gordon returns to his roots in the isolated, faux-Swedish town of Kingsburg, where those mysteries began. What he finds there will send him hurtling toward a climactic showdown against a naked assassin dead set on turning the Cold War into a hot mess. Crash Gordon and the Revelations from Big Sur is the big, shaggy conspiracy novel that everyone has always wanted to read--without actually knowing it. There's a reason for that. They don't want you to know about it. You do know there's a They, don't you?

Daring, funny, and filled with strange facts about the medico-military-occult complex, Crash Gordon and the Mysteries of Kingsburg is a paranoid comedy thats seriously concerned with the fate of humanity.

YALDABAOTH HAS A PROBLEM: a pesky author named Derek Swannson has been writing books that veer too close to the truth about the Lord of the Illuminati's underground activities on Earth... Crash Gordon and the Illuminati Underground will forever change the way you think about the extremes of fame, wealth, and power.

The Financial Crisis Inquiry Report, published by the U.S. Government and the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission in early 2011, is the official government report on the United States financial collapse and the review of major financial institutions that bankrupted and failed, or would have without help from the government. The commission and the report were implemented after Congress passed an act in 2009 to review and prevent fraudulent activity. The report details, among other things, the periods before, during, and after the crisis, what led up to it, and analyses of subprime mortgage lending, credit expansion and banking policies, the collapse of companies like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and the federal bailouts of Lehman and AIG. It also discusses the aftermath of the fallout and our current state. This report should be of interest to anyone concerned about the financial situation in the U.S. and around the world.THE FINANCIAL CRISIS INQUIRY COMMISSION is an independent, bi-partisan, government-appointed panel of 10 people that was created to "examine the causes, domestic and global, of the current financial and economic crisis in the United States." It was established as part of the Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act of 2009. The commission consisted of private citizens with expertise in economics and finance, banking, housing, market regulation, and consumer protection. They examined and reported on "the collapse of major financial institutions that failed or would have failed if not for exceptional assistance from the government."News Dissector DANNY SCHECHTER is a journalist, blogger and filmmaker. He has been reporting on economic crises since the 1980's when he was with ABC News. His film In Debt We Trust warned of the economic meltdown in 2006. He has since written three books on the subject including Plunder: Investigating Our Economic Calamity (Cosimo Books, 2008), and The Crime Of Our Time: Why Wall Street Is Not Too Big to Jail (Disinfo Books, 2011), a companion to his latest film Plunder The Crime Of Our Time. He can be reached online at www.newsdissector.com.

An amnesiac convalescing in Big Sur encounters an oddly sinister envoy from the Freemasons' Scottish Rite Psychophrenic Research Program.... A stoned surfer trespassing on Hearst Castle property gets hauled up into the sky by a massive flying black triangle.... A notorious starlet attending the wrap party for her first major Hollywood movie assassinates a Moscow journalist with a bottle of radioactive nasal spray.... In Crash Gordon and the Revelations from Big Sur, Derek Swannson combines these elements into a comic and subversive international thriller.CRASH GORDON and the Revelations from Big Sur is the big, shaggy conspiracy novel that everyone has always wanted to read--without actually knowing it. There's a reason for that. They don't want you to know about it.You do know there's a They, don't you?"Derek Swannson has created some sort of conspiracy theory/bizzaro/comedy classic that transcends any genre categorization and presents itself as a fiercely original mind-blowing literary experience. If you like your novels filled with sex, secret societies, governmental brain-washing, and visitors from outer space this book has it all and more... I haven't laughed this much since reading Christopher Moore's A Dirty Job. That's quite an achievement." --Kevin Lintner, author of Mobius and Sanity's Graveyard

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER What Melania wants, Melania gets. The former director of special events at Vogue and producer of nine legendary Met Galas, Stephanie Winston Wolkoff met Melania Knauss in 2003 and had a front row seat to the transformation of Donald Trump’s then girlfriend from a rough-cut gem to a precious diamond. As their friendship deepened over lunches at Manhattan hot spots, black-tie parties, and giggle sessions in the penthouse at Trump Tower, Wolkoff watched the newest Mrs. Trump raise her son, Barron, and manage her highly scrutinized marriage. After Trump won the 2016 election, Wolkoff was recruited to help produce the 58th Presidential Inaugu­ration and to become the First Lady’s trusted advisor. Melania put Wolkoff in charge of hiring her staff, organizing her events, helping her write speeches, and creating her debut initiatives. Then it all fell apart when she was made the scapegoat for inauguration finance irregularities. Melania could have defended her innocent friend and confidant, but she stood by her man, knowing full well who was really to blame. The betrayal nearly destroyed Wolkoff. In this candid and emotional memoir, Stephanie Winston Wolkoff takes you into Trump Tower and the White House to tell the funny, thrilling, and heartbreaking story of her intimate friendship with one of the most famous women in the world, a woman few people truly understand. How did Melania react to the Access Hollywood tape and her husband’s affair with Stormy Daniels? Does she get along well with Ivanka? Why did she wear that jacket with “I really don’t care, do u?” printed on the back? Is Melania happy being First Lady? And what really happened with the inauguration’s funding of $107 million? Wolkoff has some ideas...

"Novelistic, perfectly plotted and quite possibly the best pop-star autobiography yet written." - The Wall Street Journal Jimmy Webb’s words have been sung to his music by a rich and deep roster of pop artists, including Glen Campbell, Art Garfunkel, Frank Sinatra, Donna Summer and Linda Ronstadt. He’s the only artist ever to win Grammy Awards for music, lyrics, and orchestration, and his chart-topping career has, so far, lasted fifty years, most recently with a Kanye West rap hit and a new classical nocturne. Now, in his first memoir, Webb delivers a snapshot of his life from 1955 to 1970, from simple and sere Oklahoma to fast and fantastical Los Angeles, from the crucible of his family to the top of his longed-for profession. Webb was a preacher’s son whose father climbed off a tractor to receive his epiphany, and Jimmy, barely out of his teen age years, sank down into the driver’s seat of a Cobra to speed to Las Vegas to meet with Elvis. Classics such as “Up, Up and Away”, “By the Time I Get to Phoenix”, “Wichita Lineman”, “Galveston”, “The Worst that Could Happen”, “All I Know”, and “MacArthur Park” were all recorded by some of the most important voices in pop before Webb’s twenty-fifth birthday: he thought it was easy. The sixties were a supernova, and Webb was at their center, whipsawed from the proverbial humble beginnings into a moneyed and manic international world of beautiful women, drugs, cars and planes. That stew almost took him down—but Webb survived, his passion for music and work among his lifelines. The Cake and The Rain is a surprising and unusual book: Webb’s talent as a writer and storyteller is here on every page. His book is rich with a sense of time and place, and with the voices of characters, vanished and living, famous and not, but all intimately involved with him in his youth, when life seemed nothing more than a party and Webb the eternal guest of honor.

" ... Concise explanations and descriptions - easily read and readily understood - of what we know of the chain of events and processes that connect the Sun to the Earth, with special emphasis on space weather and Sun-Climate."--Dear Reader.

This is the story of LSD told by a concerned yet hopeful father, organic chemist Albert Hofmann, Ph.D. He traces LSD's path from a promising psychiatric research medicine to a recreational drug sparking hysteria and prohibition. In LSD: My Problem Child, we follow Dr. Hofmann's trek across Mexico to discover sacred plants related to LSD, and listen in as he corresponds with other notable figures about his remarkable discovery. Underlying it all is Dr. Hofmann's powerful conclusion that mystical experiences may be our planet's best hope for survival. Whether induced by LSD, meditation, or arising spontaneously, such experiences help us to comprehend "the wonder, the mystery of the divine, in the microcosm of the atom, in the macrocosm of the spiral nebula, in the seeds of plants, in the body and soul of people." More than sixty years after the birth of Albert Hofmann's problem child, his vision of its true potential is more relevant, and more needed, than ever.