Michael Baughman – författare

Established in 1855 on an area one-fifteenth the size of the lands relinquished in return for it, the Warm Springs Reservation in north central Oregon is home to some 3,600 Warm Springs, Wasco, and Paiute Indians, half of whom are under twenty. This book seeks to understand the reservation's inhabitants as a "viable people" who are both visible and vocal as they reflect on their daily lives, their struggles and successes, and their hopes for the future. Michael Baughman and Charlotte Hadella present extended interviews with seven Indian and two non-Indian members of the community. They discuss issues such as the difficulty of maintaining traditional lifeways centered around hunting, fishing, and gathering; the disruptions caused by alcoholism and diseases such as diabetes; and the need for culturally appropriate education for the young. The authors frame the interviews with explanatory material that covers the reservation's history and relations with white society and its efforts to transmit native languages and cultural traditions to its children.

Bird watching is by far the most popular outdoor recreation in the United States. That makes perfect sense, because their freedom of flight makes birds accessible to virtually all people everywhere -- along ocean beaches, lakeshores, rivers and creeks; on remote prairies and urban golf courses; in mountain forests and parched deserts; on Times Square and apartment house roofs; and in back yards everywhere. But due to habitat loss, pollution and climate change, there are three billion fewer birds in America today than there were in 1970. The logical conclusion to be drawn from this sad fact is that we need even more bird-watchers, people who might care enough about these wild, lovely creatures to do whatever they can to reverse this appalling decline. In his 80-plus years around birds, Michael Baughman has learned one immutable lesson: As long as you remain alive and human, the closer you get to birds, the more time you spend among them, the more you love them.

When ten-year-old Michael Baughman moves to Hawaii with his parents, he is troubled and confused. His father doesn’t provide the guidance Baughman needs and the boy doesn’t know who to turn to. When a larger-than-life Hawaiian “beachboy” named Boat takes Baughman under his wing, the boy finds a teacher and mentor. Boat is 285 pounds of solid muscle but gentle spirituality, and he introduces the boy to the ways of Hawaiian mysticism, offering simple, profound wisdom that helps Baughman thrive in an otherwise lonely childhood. Even after Baughman leaves the islands seven years later, the unlikely friendship endures for the rest of Boat’s life, influencing and inspiring the author to this day. Baughman’s narrative begins with a distressed boy at a Pittsburgh Pirates baseball game and ends more than six decades later with himself as a content old man experiencing a miracle in Mexico. With a photographic memory, Baughman recalls virtually verbatim every significant conversation he had with Boat. Boat spoke Hawaiian Pidgin English, and its unique lilt and rhythm grace this touching memoir. A testament to friendship and the revelations provoked by wisdom in unexpected places.

A funny and touching story about how to deal with the struggles of adulthood, how to live a good life, and how money can complicate it all.Michael Baughman’s hope was to send his oldest grandson off to his first year of college in the fall of 2012 with an informed and thoughtful attitude toward what has long been a powerful American fixation: the frantic quest for money. Complicating the issue was the fact that income disparity in America was increasing alarmingly, and a political campaign featuring a wealthy Republican presidential candidate who told transparent lies on a daily basis was well underway.Baughman, now an emeritus professor of English, has visited forty-nine states. As a youth he attended Punahou, the private Honolulu prep school that graduated Barack Obama. During subsequent travels he washed dishes, pumped gas, butchered meat, sold women’s lingerie at Saks Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, and served as an enlisted man in the Army.Because of these diverse experiences, Baughman’s friends and acquaintances have included the very poor as well as the very rich. Throughout most of his adult life his own income has been close to the national average. He brought all of this, and more, into his parting conversations with his grandson Billy.Money Sucks is the culmination of those discussions, rumination on the haves and the have-nots and a frank, thought-provoking look at some of the toughest questions life throws our way: What makes us happy? How much is enough? Funny and inspiring in equal measures, it’s a must-read for anyone who cares about the future of their children, grandchildren, and the friends and family they love.

Growers Market is set in remote marijuana country peopled with characters whose backgrounds are diverse and whose futures are uncertain. Sunbeam, who entered adult life as a 1960s San Francisco hippie girl, moved north searching for peace and quiet in unspoiled nature. Eventually she ended up running The Bird of Prey Tavern and growing enough weed to support her tranquil life. The men who eventually work for her – Shadow, Shrimp, Stones, Toon, Shakespeare – are combat veterans searching for some of the same things Sunbeam found. A Vietnam vet named Case, a widower, is Sunbeam’s neighbor. Living on the top floor of the tavern is Rainbow, a runaway from Texas, who tends bar and nurses her husband, a quadriplegic known as Uncle Sam.Shadow and Shrimp plan to take the money they’ve earned growing weed and open a restaurant. Shakespeare is hard at work on a novel about a hero named Superpenis, modeled after the cartoon character Plastic Man, and a New York publisher is interested. The heavily tattooed Toon sees himself as a living visual symbol of a world gone mad, and Stones has fallen in love with a virtual stranger at a homeless shelter. But now in the second decade of the 21st century new people have arrived to claim space in the quiet valleys, next to the clear-flowing creeks, along the green mountainsides. They are large-scale growers, armed gangs, corrupt cops and drug cartels, and violence and death come with them. Shadow, Shrimp, Shakespeare, Toon, and Stones must defend their turf against more heavily armed men who don''t mind declaring war to claim this marijuana country as their own.Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade, Yucca, and Good Books imprints, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in fiction—novels, novellas, political and medical thrillers, comedy, satire, historical fiction, romance, erotic and love stories, mystery, classic literature, folklore and mythology, literary classics including Shakespeare, Dumas, Wilde, Cather, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.