Minstrel’s Alley Offers Election Special on Reagan Era Book, Beautiful Bad Girl
(Los Angeles) Minstrel’s Alley announced it was holding the EBook Price of the best selling “Beautiful Bad Girl, The Vicki Morgan Story” through the course of the Republican election campaign. The book documents the tempestuous affair during the Ronald Reagan Presidential Administration between department store scion, Alfred Bloomingdale, and his long time mistress, Vicki Morgan. [...]
Students Sample the Large Shelf of California Literature
All of Gordon Basichis’ books are written with California as a character. His newest, The Blood Orange (Minstrel’s Alley 2011,) incorporates legends from Old California into a contemporary mystery thriller.
Gordon Basichis Included on List of 100 Top Facebook Authors
Gordon Basichis included on list of 100 Top Facebook Authors.
Minstrel’s Alley Discounts eBook Publications for the Holiday Season
Minstrel’s Alley will be discounting its ebooks for the holiday season. The discount applies to all electronic publication editions, including Kindle, iPad, Barnes & Noble, Sony eReader, Smashwords, and Kobo.
Will They Serve Frozen Yogurt at the Next Revolution
Will They Serve Frozen Yogurt at the Next Revolution
By Gordon Basichis
All rhetoric aside, revolutions are not started by the poor. The poor may contribute later on, or pile in and take the revolution to certain extremes, but they are not the ones who start it. I realize it is romantic to think of the poor rising up to break the yoke of poverty, but it is simply not the case. It could be argued that if the poor were that well organized, then they would get it together enough not to be poor.
It’s the disaffected bourgeoisie, the merchant class, the middle class, that always always gets the ball rolling. If at first it is not the middle class directly then it is their progeny, their erstwhile sons and daughters who grow restive in the coffee houses or on the job, in the schools, where discussion leads to protests, and protests leads to violence, or the series of incidents that set it all off. Robespierre, one of the leaders of the French Revolution, was from a family of lawyers. Castro, in Cuba, was from a wealthy middle class family and also a lawyer.
Lenin was also an attorney; his father a director/inspector of the public school system. Trotsky was raised in a family of wealthy farmers. Che Guevera was from an upper middle class family and was himself a doctor. Mao Zedong’s father may have started life as a peasant, but by the time Mao was still a young boy the old man was doing just fine as a farmer and grain merchant.
The American forefathers were largely merchants or gentrified farmers. Those frocked coats and powdered wigs cost a few bucks, and none of them have been cited as showing up in a peasant rags. In the case of most revolutions, the leading intellectuals and rabble rousers took their cues from principles and doctrines in the literature of choice. The French and the Americans cited passages from the Age of Reason, while the Russians and Chinese took their cue from Karl Marx. Most peasants weren’t reading Marx at the time, and the literature found in Age of Reason or the Enlightenment was mainly accessible to those that had money, and certainly those who could read.
Another misnomer is that revolutions occur out of principle. That they are driven by the abstracts of ideology and their anticipated application. Revolutions, at least successful ones, are based in economics and not the more higher minded principles as some would believe. Most successful revolutions emanate from self-interest and economic necessity before being disseminated to a greater mass through rhetorical ideology. Even in today’s world where even the most complex strategic considerations are boiled down to simple jargon and sound bites, embedded at the root core there is short and long range self-interest and its related economics. The higher minded rhetoric, all that stuff about liberty, equality…whatever…comes after when you need more bodies to sacrifice themselves for the greater cause.
Coming Soon – Ghosts of Havana by Cameron Lee
Ghosts of Havana by Cameron Lee, will be published in the Fall of 2011. A modern day mystery thriller, the adventure is set in motion by events in Havana, Cuba during the Revolution.
Minstrel’s Alley Publishes New Novel, ‘The Blood Orange,’ by Gordon Basichis
The Blood Orange, a hard-edged romantic mystery thriller in upscale modern day Los Angeles, is a story of transition and transcendence, a quest for a treasure and a search for the soul. It is a tale of deadly conflict among the rich and powerful, a battle set in motion by events of old Spanish California.
Minstrel’s Alley to Release “The Blood Orange”
Minstrel’s Alley will soon be releasing Gordon Basichis’ new novel, The Blood Orange.
Evergreen Review reviews The Guys Who Spied for China
Evergreen Review‘s New Edition: The Guys Who Spied for China By Gordon Basichis (Minstrel’s Alley, 2010) Review by Kevin Riordan This roman a clef puts us face to face with some extraordinarily paranoid individuals, along with the proof that, yes, they have been paying attention. Rather than going for literary extravagance, Basichis has assembled a [...]
Minstrel’s Alley Acquires Kindle and eBook Rights to The Constant Travellers
(Los Angeles) Minstrel’s Alley has just acquired the Kindle, Smashwords, and other eBook publishing rights to “The Constant Travellers,” a novel written by Gordon Basichis The ad copy refers to itself as sex and drugs in the West That Never Was and tells a comic, but metaphysical Western tale involving a journey between a young Civil War veteran and an Indian Shaman. The two meet in the middle of the desert, and as they embark on a journey where they encounter endless colorful characters, they discover their destinies have long been intertwined.
“We are thrilled to be offering “The Constant Travelers,” in a Kindle, Smashwords, and other ebook versions, “ said M.J. Hammond, president of independent publisher and media company, Minstrel’s Alley.