26 Years Behind Bars

The book is written from the perspective of a participant observer. It is not strictly an autobiography or a history, although it has elements of both, as it would fail without them. It is intended for both the general reader and criminal justice professionals. My intention is that the book is educational, showing the prison system over three decades in the context of social, political and organisational change, in particular the impact of the decline of deference, the growth of public managerialism and the rise of political correctness. The trenchant opinions expressed are based on intellectual rumination, observation of human behaviour, and personal and professional experience. I have deliberately chosen a thematic approach for the book so that explanation and information work in tandem, giving a unique insight into the modern prison service and the workings of the public sector.

Armenians of Iraq

Armenians are one of the ethnic components of the Iraqi social spectrum. Nothing was known about Armenians of Iraq except as Christians or as migrants from Armenia originally. It is well known that the Armenians of Iraq are generally keen to preserve their Armenian ethnic and cultural entity and are usually peaceful and far from being involved in political conflicts and polarization. However, some people might imagine them living in the shadows or margins of Iraqi life, especially since there is a near-total absence of studies on Iraqi Armenians in the different fields of humanities and social sciences.

This gives us an impression of their conservatism and closeness, but this dissipates as soon as the researcher goes to investigate them.

This leaves us with a number of questions about the existence of Armenian people in Iraq. What is their relationship with the mother country, Armenia? What are the demographic characteristics of their population in Arabic countries? What are the social and cultural characteristics of their lifestyle in Iraq, including marriage customs? What were their roles in the development of Iraqi public life if they existed in Iraq? Do they have a conflict of social identity? All these queries are our current research concerns through which to introduce Iraqi Armenians to the reader and interested parties.                                    

Beautyland

“She is going to sell you something and you will buy it.”

It’s Fashion Week and Lower Manhattan churns with construction on the third anniversary of 9/11, as Emma O’Farrell Paige arrives at the federal courthouse to depose her former boss, the diabolical villain behind a counterfeit perfume ring.

With little more than tenacity and courage, Emma breaks free from her dysfunctional Midwest childhood and fights for her long-distance marriage to independent league baseball pitcher Ethan Paige, as she plays to win among world-class dealmakers in the trenches of the international beauty biz.

Under the guidance of mentor and boss Julian Petrenko, Emma masterminds the two-hundred-million-dollar fragrance deal with boy band sensation ‘UK Connection’. When the deal of the decade reveals the underbelly of the vaulted Beautyland, Emma is forced to examine herself as closely as she’s studied the beauty game.

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Beautyland is hard to put down, engaging the reader from the first word, a riveting story of a women who knows her destiny and never gives up. Dana Kline’s writing makes you feel every emotion deeply and twists and turns in the story are ones you would never expect. I didn’t want to put the book to end as I felt like I was saying goodbye to my friend. You will truly love this book”

– Tracey Bregman

American Actress & Producer

Human Model

In Human Model, Dr. Issam Wadi summarises and explains more than 40 years of professional and academic research into human and social behaviour. He examines important aspects in our lives by showing how human and social systems are deeply influenced by universal, natural processes. He shows how research in the natural and social sciences can help to illuminate complex human processes, using friction theory to explain how human beings relate to one another, how resonance theory provides us with a better understanding of mass behaviour, advertising, and marketing, and how feedback theory explains human behaviour from a management perspective.

Drawing these parallels between natural and human systems helps to illustrate the way that human beings are embedded within larger, natural processes, as well as supplying a much clearer and easy to understand approach for readers and researchers. With the starting blocks in place, one can then begin to use proven scientific theories and social models to develop more sophisticated analyses and studies of complex social behaviour, from mass movements and crowd psychology to financial markets and economic forecasting.

This book is an important milestone in the modelling and understanding of human social behaviour and aims to contribute both to a broader mainstream understanding of these fields and further research through these versatile social modelling tools. Human Model also explains the author’s own ‘Zero Sum Theory’ for explaining happiness in life and how this can be affected by the individual’s own mental models, while providing further reflections on the impact of technology on modern life, social behaviour, the family, and society more broadly.

Marriage, The Iranian Style

Every time I attended a wedding for a reason, I noticed that despite all prior talks and agreements, the wedding ceremony was again carried out with great difficulty, and the couple endured many troubles to be able to get together. It was not because of not having a home and a lack of income, or due to the legal age for marriage, but the customs of the time, the condition of parental consent and their meddling in their child’s future life, or even the influence of the bride and groom siblings, were the main reasons to lead the simple routine of marriage in a bumpy and misled way, and even prevent it from happening.

I’d already written about my cousin in a family context in my diary. After reading it again, I realized what interesting and surprising, and at the same time painful, points there were during their marriage. For this reason, I decided to write about this event, which might be considered as a sample for other marriages, in a separate book in detail, called Marriage, The Iranian Style, so that the unpleasant parts can be reflected on.

Money, Power, Dominance

From the telegram to Instagram, western culture has undergone drastic changes in the way individuals communicate with one another. Steven Kuhn details how these changes have progressed and the consequences these innovations have had on our culture. Hugh Heffner and Gianni Versace have proven themselves to be influential titans in utilising mass media. They have changed the western concept of femininity by building on the print media created by Hollywood and moulding the ‘super model’. Heffner would go on to pioneer reality television in a way which continues to influence twenty-first-century programming and vanity-driven social media platforms. Long after Hollywood in the 1920s and the rise of the internet from the cold war, social media was born, exacerbating the culture of sexualisation and dominance competition which had always existed offline. From Piczo to Tik Tok, Steven Kuhn shows where our electronic culture is heading in the future.

Mother’s Love

Mother’s Love is a series of essays about social issues. I say that my readers know my essays are good for them like broccoli, but the jokes throughout are sort of the cream cheese that makes the essays tasty. I started writing them in 2014 and then picked up where I left off in 2021. Some of the best essays were written while travelling to Brooklyn in New York in 2021. The other more notable essays were written after long beach walks where I would empty my mind out so when I started writing I would only have a heading in mind and then let the rest flow directly out of my subconscious. I often say that my life is sort of a circus that my essays are based on but the Dalai Lama says circuses are fun. 

My Mother was a Woman

Gender equality should be top of the agenda of discourse on human affairs. There is no rhyme nor reason for the status of women to be languishing below the male ranking. The ‘weaker sex’ label must cease forthwith. Women are strong, resilient and always unbowed. Moreover, women conceive and populate our world with all the talents the human race celebrates from time to time. Women deserve to be ululated and rewarded. The current status demeans women and denies the human race the chance to scale the heights it has the potential to scale!

Pass On My Greetings to Jenny

There is a very deep sense of gratitude that I have kept in my heart, a gratitude that I cannot describe in words. I promise in my heart that someday I will come to meet her, to convey my gratitude and I really want to repay her kindness. Now I have been waiting too long, for seven years, but there's no chance to meet her and that hope is only stored in my heart, I don't know for how long. One morning when I woke up from my sleep, I stood in front of the mirror. I saw there was one grey hair and I realised that I was old. Then I asked myself, if today I die without the slightest amount of time to fix anything, what would I regret the most? My answer was; I will be sorry because I haven't had the chance to meet Jenny to convey my gratitude. I wrote this book, because I did not know when would I meet her. If I would never have time to express my gratitude to her, at least through this book I have already conveyed it. Jenny is a beautiful old woman who helped me that night, the night I was struggling. Not even one person was by my side, even I could not help myself. Thank you, Jenny. If you were not there, I might have had a miscarriage, or I might had died.

Pieces of a Larger Mirror

“If anyone believes they are religious and does not bridle their tongue but deceives their own heart, this person’s religion is worthless.” James 1:26

Not to be read in isolation, or necessarily in order, walk side by side with the narrator as she opens up on issues of childhood experience and race, upbringing and relationships, schooling and culture through a unique lens intended to be merely the beginning of your journey upward, outward, inward. Are you ready to look into the mirror?

Receiving Your Personal Truth

Our contemporary world is experiencing a crisis in facts and truth. Conflicting messages or fake news bombard us every day, about religion, politics, and COVID-19 and vaccinations. The daily newspaper, internet news, websites, and social media all compete for our attention, and quite often each insisting on their version of the facts. Made-up news and distorted information, create confusion and a distrust in various religious and political institutions.

How do we know what is true when watching the news, listening to elected officials and religious leaders, or using social media? Who is telling the truth? How can we know? What can we do?

In Receiving your Personal Truth, you are taken on a journey where you experience what is truth for yourself. Practical ways of receiving your truth are suggested. The skill of awareness and self-critical thinking enables us to understand what is true and what is false. In observing that we are one with oneness of it all, we act with compassion towards everyone.

Spirits of Severn

The River Severn is Britain's longest natural waterway. It rises in mid-Wales, where it is known as the Hafren. Both these names stem from that of a river goddess, known since prehistoric times as Sabrina. To stop anywhere along Sabrina's course, or on either side of her beautiful estuary, is to risk becoming absorbed and transfixed by her ever-moving, yet timelessly repetitive progress. Throw a net across Sabrina, from side to side, and you might catch a fish, but the body of her stream will pass straight through the mesh. Can words possibly convey the elusive majesty of her current, or adequately describe its multi-stranded sacred story? In Spirits of Severn, artist and mythographer Michael Dames - whose acclaimed work includes The Silbury Treasure, The Avebury Cycle and Mythic Ireland - brings the river's illusive legacy to the surface, while tracing her progress from her pair of sources to the furthest tips of her Mor Hafren estuary.