Desperate Days: Survival and Hope (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781982061524)

I live in Thailand with my wife, Uraiwan, and three dogs, in Rawai Beach where I am writing new books after a marathon 2017 when I completed my trilogy and other works. I retired from teaching in 2013 after 13 years in Manhattan high schools. In 2004, I took a year off, and wrote at Starbucks in Astor Place every day, substantially writing three books, although two -"The Jack Trilogy" and "Desperate Days" - took years to finish. Back then, I taught English, U.S. and Global History, and journalism to NYC students. I plan to develop units soon (free to teachers) for the trilogy and Desperate Days - each containing multiple lesson plans. Please contact me via the links in the books. Both works contain instances of profanity which should not be a problem for the upper high school age group. I can provide separate 'cleansed' editions to teachers if profanity is a problem. I set the age level for these books at 16 and the grade level at 11, but advanced 9th and 10th grade students would do well reading these books. Both novels would be exceptional cross-curricular choices - in the areas of literature, history and humanities. I want to add that both works also were written for an adult audience. Historical fiction has been my favorite genre since my elementary school years. I still recall being fascinated with the 'World History' text books as early as the 4th or 5th grade. By high school, I was independently reading the great Russian writers. I continued to independently pursue a classical education by reading dozens of the ancient works of Greece and Rome while reading the great classical philosophers up to the more modern ones. I studied English and journalism at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where I received BA degrees, and received my Master of Science in Literacy at Touro College, Manhattan, and took night classes in European history and French Painting at Harvard. I spent ten years in Boston-area courts. Those years were a fantastic learning experience. I began in 1980 as the Lowell Sun's court reporter in Cambridge not long after John Kerry left his job there as First Assistant Middlesex District Attorney. There were nearly 100 prosecutors in the DA's office then. I later took over Middlesex News Service. Few people see a murder trial gavel to gavel during their lifetime. I saw about 500. Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment and Kafka's The Trial were the inspiration behind those ten years - amazing what books can do.