Friends of mine have penned two amazing books recently – a former PR partner, David Hamlin, wrote the mystery Winter in Chicago on drugs, death and rock and roll on Chicago’s AM radio dial, while Jenny historian Deason Copeland has self-published a non-fiction book she researched for many years, Tiananmen West: Why Nixon Ordered the Kent State Massacre.

Both talented friends have been busy interviewing and visiting book stores – David out in southern California and Jenny in suburban Michigan.  David and his wife Sydney met in Chicago in the 70s, where she was breaking barriers for women in radio news broadcasting and he was the head of the local ACLU.  The novel was inspired by Sydney Weisman’s trailblazing news career, which later took the duo to California where I encountered them in the early 90s and eventually became a marketing partner in their firm, WHPR, following the LA riots.  You can read more about Winter in Chicago and order it on the publisher’s website at http://www.open-bks.com/library/moderns/winter-in-chicago/about-book.html

As the cover states, Jenny’s book Tiananmen West “encompasses decades of research by the author in hope of replacing conspiracy theories with facts.  The FoIA (Freedom of Information Act) requests reveal some interesting new perspectives of not only the Kent State Massacre, but how the mind of Richard Nixon could justify such an event.”  Jenny ends the book with a call to action to require psychological profiling of Presidential candidates to block another Nixon from the White House.  Jenny’s website and more information is at http://www.crazyredheadpublishing.com/   Both books are available on Amazon.com.