“Devlin,” the anonymous, alienated agent of the Central Security Service who takes on all America’s enemies, both foreign and domestic, is back in my new thriller, Shock Warning, out this week. (The Kindle edition will be released on Oct. 4)

It’s the third in the series that began with Hostile Intent in 2009 and continued with last year’s Early Warning. This volume concludes what I call the Skorzeny Trilogy, after the chief bad, Emanuel Skorzeny, the shadowy German billionaire who’s waging a private war against both Devlin, the American president, Jeb Tyler, and the West as a presidential election looms.

In this excerpt, the publishing mogul Jake Sinclair, who’s also made it his mission to destroy Tyler, has just learned of a terrible accident in California, and gets his best reporter — the sexy Principessa Stanley (who figured prominently in Early Warning) — on the case:

CHAPTER ELEVEN

New York City

The news was breaking as Jake Tyler entered the offices on Sixth Avenue.  Normally he didn’t come to New York much, certainly not since they’d moved the corporate base of operations to Los Angeles in some choice Century City property he just happened to own.

He’d flown in on his private jet, and if there was one rule he had on his private jet it was that he was not to be disturbed for any reason whatsoever, short of Selenites landing at Bowling Green or, worse, Carbon Beach.  Or Elvis, reappearing in Branson.

(more…)

Amelia Hamilton, a communications consultant and writer in Colorado, recently announced a new venture of hers: her very first children’s book publication, One Nation Under God: A Book For Little Patriots. Between her constant travels and managing her small business, it’s hard to keep up with her, but we were able to ask a few questions about the book, her experiences as a self-publisher, and how she’s linked Frank Capra to the project.

So, for those who aren’t familiar, what is the purpose of the book? How is it structured, and what kind of lessons are you sending to its “little patriot” readers?

It is a teaching tool to help kids learn the fundamentals of America. So, it goes from one nation under God through ten amendments in the Bill of Rights. It’s a counting book, but it covers government structure, history–a little bit of everything. It’s meant for ages 5-8; the counting aspect is for younger children, but they might not really understand the concepts until they’re a little older. Still, good to familiarize them with it early!

What brought about the decision to make a book specifically catering to conservative parents?

It’s not really conservative; it’s more patriotic. It’s all factual things–I guess “one nation under God” is considered religious–but aside from that, things like 10 amendments in the Bill of Rights are pretty straightforward, information for kids. (more…)

“Atlas Shrugged: Part 1,” the film adaptation of Ayn Rand’s prescient, unabashedly pro-free market capitalism novel, hits theaters today. Its timing could not be better.

Though taken from a book written a half-century ago and set in the year 2016, the movie is eerily similar to the world today, bearing a particular resemblance to the United States and the societal and economic depreciation of states like California, where manufacturing industries have collapsed, economic liberty and entrepreneurialism are eroding, and productive members of society seem to be rapidly disappearing, or rather, run out of business by bureaucratic red tape and unreasonable regulations.

—–

While the literary polish of Rand’s 1,000-plus-page novel is unparalleled, the cinematic version of her philosophical peregrination that questions which society is preferable for mankind – one of rational self-interest or one of suppressive of individualism meant to level all individual output – upholds her objectivist worldview and ought to stoke the debate about free society and the role of government.

Not only is the film a winner for holding firm to Randian philosophy, it also brazenly and refreshingly brings a political perspective that is almost universally absent from the big screen; so much so in fact it could become a cult classic, especially among Tea Partiers and their admirers, not to mention hordes of libertarians.

The film, true to the book, is set in the United States in 2016, with a global economy in shambles, conflicts in the Middle East disrupting oil supplies, massive oil spills, pronounced class warfare, demonization of private companies, overly powerful union bosses, bureaucrats and special interests, empty factories, fleeing entrepreneurs and innovators, overreaching government regulations and businesses ever more subservient to government bureaucracy. Does this dystopian society seem familiar? If not, perhaps you have been hiding in some utopian village in the Rocky Mountains the rest of us do not know about.

(more…)

In November 1974, Werner Herzog received a most distressing phone call. Lotte Eisner, the beloved doyenne of German cinema, was dying. Part film historian, part published critic, part heroic preservationist, and part muse to the filmmakers struggling to piece together the broken shards of German culture left in the wake of the Nazis, Eisner was a legendary figure in Herzog’s eyes, and had inspired him to persevere through a decade of near-poverty as a struggling director. Now, at seventy-eight years old, she was deathly ill and not expected to survive.

Herzog was in Munich, Eisner in Paris, and their mutual friends implored the thirty-two-year-old director to fly to France post-haste so that he might say his goodbyes while there was still time. But Herzog would have none of it. “This must not be,” he remembered thinking. “German cinema could not do without her now. We would not permit her death.” And so, suddenly afire with what he once called in another context “the fervor and woe of pilgrims and prayers and hopes,” Herzog made a momentous decision: he would set out from his apartment in Munich and walk the five-hundred miles to Paris “in full faith, believing that she would stay alive if I came on foot.”

Days stretched into weeks as he trod alone through the winter sleet, sometimes breaking into barns or empty cottages to survive the cold nights and taking only a single detour, “to the town of Troyes, because I wanted to walk into the cathedral there.” Finally he arrived exhausted at Eisner’s Paris apartments to find her “still tired and marked by her illness,” but recovering against all odds. She would live nine more years, until at last, “when she was nearly blind, could not walk or read or go out to see films,” she called Herzog back to Paris and told him, “Werner, there is still this spell cast over me that I am not allowed to die. I am tired of life. It would be a good time for me now.” Herzog recalls that, “Jokingly I said, ‘OK, Lotte, I hereby take the spell away,” and three weeks later Lotte Eisner died. (more…)

Mark Twain’s famous quote, “Never pick a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel,” resonates loudly in my mind as I finish Sarah Palin’s captivating story, Going Rogue.

But Palin ain’t buying it by the barrel, she’s got a whole pipeline of pure grade indigo flowing from the North Slope as she pumps up the volume on her NY Times #1 bestselling memoir.

When I got about halfway through the book I set it down, stepped outside of my Washington, DC townhouse and went for a run around the U.S. Capitol. Listening to the Outlaws, Marshall Tucker Band, and Lil Bow Wow (my daughter slipped that one in there) on my iPod, the recurrent thought in my mind was that this woman is far more qualified to be president of the United States than the current occupant of the White House. (more…)

Yes, you heard me. “Screw Europe,” I say to you. With all of this “repairing of international relations” going on, the press (along with every “Green Day Liberal” in the Western hemisphere) seem to be getting quite giddy. Finally we’ll be more like the Europeans and maybe, just maybe, that will allow us to be on better footing with them. To all of you I ask… Why?

Why on EARTH would the United States ever want to be more like Europe? Correct me if I’m wrong, but we left, did we not? Not only did we leave that older, lesser world behind, but we left skid-marks along the way with an entire continent eating our proverbial dust. Those were good times… Not to mention the asskickery that followed suit.

The truth is we’ve been doing things far better than Europe for centuries. We’ve built a stronger military and a much more dynamic economy than any of our European counterparts… And we’ve done it in record time. We left the world’s greatest superpowers one century only to blaze past them the next. (more…)