I know a great author. You might want to pick up one or two of his marvelous books for your Summer reading. You can thank me later.

Consider this. It is warm summer eve. The sun is setting over the calming waters. You wish to relax, perhaps entertain something within your restless mind or febrile imagination. A good book … that would do the trick. Well, I have just the literary offerings for you to consider. Keep scrolling!

Below are four fictional works to both engage and challenge you. Seriously, people really liked them.

I start with Oblique Journeys. This work, drawn in part from my own experiences, brings the reader back to the turbulent 1960s and the conflict that tore the country apart … the Vietnam war. It is a story experienced thousands of times … a young man must decide where his loyalties lie and what his moral center tells him he must do. Most of the narrative takes place over four decades in the future as he retired from an academic position in the country to which he fled so many years ago … Canada. Over the course of one week, Joshua Connelly comes to terms with himself, his conscience, and the relationships seemingly lost when he fled north at the onset of his adult life. Ultimately, it is a story of reconciliation and redemption.

The next three works (Palpable Passions, Ordinary Obsessions, and Felicitous Fates) are part of a series though, according to readers, each stands alone. There is plenty of backstory in each for the reader to get into the complex narrative no matter where they start. Essentially, the series deals with the saga of two familes, the Crawfords in America and later in Britain, and the Masoud clan, starting in Afghanistan before moving on the Britain. Both families engage in a two decade struggle against the push to establish autocratic and oppressive rule in their worlds. The Crawford children react to their far right patriarch as he pushes his autocratic vision in the States. The Masoud girls, Azita and Deena, are inspired to fight against the Taliban regime which would truncate their dreams as educated women. The two families come together by circumstance as their personal challenges are explored on several levels … relational, political, internal, and moral. In their stories, the central conflicts of our age are explored. All these works received very high reader reviews with Ordinary Obsessions getting 4.8 out of 5 stars.

By the way, the Connelly story and characters are reintroduced in the final work of the original series … Felicitous Fates.

Now we move on to the final work in the series, and my most recent literary gem … Refractive Reflections. Actually, Felicitous Fates originally was designed to end the saga involving the Masoud and Crawford clans. Then, the damn Taliban made a comeback in Afghanistan and the far right, at Trump’s urging, attempted a violent coup in the States. Obviously, the narrative drama had to continue. It proved to be an opportunity to bring greater closure to the Joshua Connelly story. Only time will tell if this is really the end. Refractive Reflections (below) is propbably my most thoughtful work though I try to balance several dimensions in all my writings … drama, introspection, relational conflict, moral and ethical questioning, and personal redemption (or not).

Don’t like fiction! Not to worry, I have more for you. The three works below are memoirs, each written with great wit and considerable insight (in my humble opinion). A Clueless Rebel is the story of my struggle to figure out who I was. It is also a nostalgic trip back to the post World War II period when life was lived in a simpler manner and yet the possibilities appeared endless. The Amazon readers of an early version gave this 4.9 out of 5 stars, just about the best response you can get.

A Wayward Academic: Reflections from the policy trenches tells the story of my professional life. As it turned out, I stumbled into a career as a policy wonk that put me in the center of one of the more challenging issues of my generation … welfare reform and what to do with our poor. It was one hell of a ride which I recount once again with considerable wit. One of the best Washington-based advocates I know said that I was the only writer he knew who could discuss welfare reform and still make people laugh.

Finally, Our Grand Adventure is the story of my Peace Corps Group, India-44. We were volunteers during the period known as the ‘wild west’ of the PC experiment back in the 1960s. We also served in what was widely known as one of toughest sites at that time … India. To make it even more challenging, we were city kids who were given a bit of training and told too be farming experts. That was a bad idea. Our antics and efforts are hilarious and worth the price of admission.

Now, if you are looking for something of a more serious or intellectual flavor, I will throw out two possibilities. You might try Confessions of an Accidental Scholar. I think of this as the best thoughts of Tom Corbett and draws on my extensive professional writings, mostly from FOCUS, a widely admired policy publication of the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I have always tried to write for an audience beyond the small band of scholars who frequent peer reviewed journals. If you like public policy, you will love this book.

Just to fill in the range of possibilities, I’ll suggest Evidence-Based Policymaking. This is a real academic work co-authored with Karen Bogenschneider and deals with the impediments to better employing science and reason in the policy arts. This was a topic of enormous interest to Karen and I. Warning, this is not a light read but not as bad as most academic tomes.

Well, there should be plenty here to keep you busy this summer. And then, when they make movies of some of these classics, you can say that you knew me when I was a nobody :-)!