Warren Adler's Blog, page 40

Brian Feinblum’s New Interview With Famed Author Warren Adler

 

Warren, what is your newest book about? My latest book, Treadmill, is a political thriller. It was inspired by my own experience in the gym in Washington and the people with whom I exercised. The main character is an unemployed lonely depressed man who keeps body and soul together by spending a great deal of time in the gym. Odd strangers begin to show up in the gym. There he befriends another man who mysteriously disappears and he sets out to find him. Why has he disappeared? Was it foul play? In his search he discovers that he too is being pursued for reasons he cannot fathom. It takes place in the Washington area. There is a political context. Beyond that I can’t reveal any more as it will give the plot away.

What inspired you to write it? I have written numerous books about political Washington where I lived for thirty-five years and knew many of the important figures during the time I lived there. I had special access, especially through the magazine that we owned (and my wife and son ran), called The Washington Dossier. I knew Presidents, Senators, Ambassadors, Congressman, media types and all the important people during that era. My eight mystery books feature Fiona Fitzgerald, daughter of a fictional Senator and a homicide detective in Washington. It is being adapted to a TV series.

How does it compare to some of your previous books? Compare? It is one of my 40 novels. I never compare them. I treat them all as my children and I never have favored any of my children. I love my work and have been doing it since I was a teenager.

You love to write across many genres and themes. Is that unusual for writers? I suppose it is unusual although many writers cross genres. I can’t write to the rules of any genre. I write what interests me. If it falls vaguely into a genre format I don’t realize it. It is both a benefit and a curse, but I just keep writing and let the chips fall where they may. I have optioned or sold many of my novels to film and television. My son Jonathan Robert Adler has formed his own production company, Grey Eagle Films, which has the rights to my books. He currently has nine of them in some form of development for theatrical films or TV.

Did I hear correctly that War of the Roses, your book that became famous as a movie, will be a Broadway play? What is that all about? Yes, it has been optioned as a Broadway play by important Broadway producers. Based exclusively on my novel, it has appeared in other countries all over the world. We are hopeful it will be staged on Broadway sometime this year or early next.

What trends are you seeing in book publishing today? The shift to digital has been astounding as I predicted when I introduced the first viable reader at the Las Vegas Consumer Electronics Show in 2007. I am a pioneer in digital, having taken all of my book rights back in the late eighties. At that time I had twenty-seven novels published by traditional publishers, which were also translated into many languages. I have since published 13 in digital and POD with more to come. My company does not follow traditional patterns of publishing. My goal is to keep my authorial name alive beyond my lifetime. No one knows what will happen to the future of publishing and reading.

What did you make of the Amazon-Hachette dispute? A business ploy on the issue of how to split proceeds. It has been settled. The big question is how will the author benefit? We shall see. I wrote an article, The Fate of the Novelist: A Reality Check, that sums up all of my thoughts on it in full detail.

This Interview Originally Appeared on Book Marketing Buzz Blog

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“Have Jews Ever Been Safe in France?” featured in THE TIMES OF ISRAEL

Warren Adler’s “Have Jews Ever Been Safe in France?” Featured in THE TIMES OF ISRAEL 

Read the entire article here

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The Daily Show with Jon Stewart: THE WAR OF THE *P*OSES

Jon Stewart references THE WAR OF THE ROSES (in this case THE WAR OF THE *P*OSES), in a hilarious commentary on tensions that flare up when Miss Universe contestants from Lebanon and Israel take a selfie together. Watch the original segment here.

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Why Do Women Read More Novels Than Men?

 

There is ample statistical evidence showing that adult women read more novels than men, attend more book clubs than men, use libraries more than men, buy more books than men, take more creative writing courses than men, and probably write more works of fiction than men. If, as a demographic, they suddenly stopped reading, the novel would nearly disappear.

A recent perusal of the New York Times fiction best-seller list, scoring sales of print and e-books combined, showed that of the fifteen titles listed, eleven were written by women. Indeed, women are the bulwarks of the novel trade. Those statistics could lead one to also believe that the reason for such disparity is that stories told in novels, the characters, plots, insights, inner thoughts, experiences and wisdom offered are skewed to reflect a female point of view.

Even if you take romance fiction out of the mix, formula romance and its many spinoffs, a surefire product targeted exclusively to women, women readers continue to outpace men. Having even moved into reading categories once considered strictly male turf, women readers and writers today are heavily represented across many genres from science fiction and zombie novels to mystery, suspense, horror, thrillers, military, including a myriad of other sub-genres.

Heroines abound, many created by men, including myself. My mystery series set in Washington, D.C., features Fiona Fitzgerald, a female detective, and like Barbara Rose, in The War of the Roses, women emerge in strong roles in my writing. Gender, in my writing process, has little to do with marketing considerations. My creative subconscious and intuition demand it, and I am certain that female writers create male characters for similar reasons, however mysterious. So, most female authors do not write exclusively about women despite the fact that they have an overwhelming female readership.

Whatever publishing discrimination might have existed for women in the past, they obviously do not exist in the present. I’m inclined to believe that women, despite once being held back by education, custom and bias, and restricted to roles primarily as caregivers and nurturers, have surreptitiously dominated the market for novels. The creative urge operates outside the parameters of gender and, despite the restrictions, women have been writing and publishing novels from the moment the form emerged.

In the murky definition where the literary crosses swords with the popular, note the names of these authors: Dickens, Balzac, Bronte, Tolstoy, Lessing, Hemingway, Sands, Eliot, Austen, Proust, Shelly, Faulkner, Joyce, McCullers, Fitzgerald, Cather, Stowe, Wharton, etc. — some female and some male. Their stories have been told from the point of view of both genders; stories that are about the human species and not confined merely to an isolated gender.

The gender of a novelist is irrelevant to their creativity. The criterion is talent, a mysterious and extraordinary gift that does not discriminate. A talented female author can find her way into the mind and heart of her male characters just as a male writer can do the same with his female characters. If there is some mythical dividing line between the insight, wisdom, and literary skill between men and women, it is not apparent to me. As for the reasons women dominate the reading market or perhaps the writing profession, I don’t have the answers — I can understand economic and opportunity parity, but not intellectual and artistic parity.

As a reader, I make my selections solely on the basis of which author moves me to enter his or her world, and follow the lives of their characters into the mysteries of their destiny. I hope the readers of my work feel the same way.

Why do you think women read more novels than men? Or will the question continue to baffle, like the mystery of love and attraction?

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LITERARY REJECTIONS features Warren Adler’s “On Rejection and Renewal”

Check Out “On Rejection and Renewal” recently featured on LITERARY REJECTIONS

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THE HUFFINGTON POST features “Pen or Computer: Which is Better for Creativity?”

Fresh Off the Press – Check Out “Pen or Computer: Which is Better for Creativity?” on THE HUFFINGTON POST 

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Pen or Computer: Which is Better for Creativity?

 

For writers of the imagination, what we fear the most is a disruption, a blockage, a sudden dam that changes the course of the river of creativity. Back in the late sixties and early seventies when technological innovation began to creep into the public consciousness, I shunned all the so-called marvels of computers when it came to my writing process. As a novelist, I feared that switching to these new fangled machines might somehow inhibit my ever-reliable muse, but what I feared most was a disruption of my creative process, a drastic change to my internal thinking patterns that would inhibit my imagination. A strange new means of composition at the time, the computer seemed an intrusion or, at best, an unwelcome detour on a well-traveled road to storytelling.

The Old Days

Up to that point, I had been composing in pen and ink before making the transition to a manual typewriter. I had learned to type at the age of seventeen on a clunky old Remington and had become quickly used to the feel of the keys on my fingers. I discovered how great it was to see my words in black type, almost as if it were already a page in a book. I have to admit, that as I continue to work on a keyboard today, I’ve found that it creates the same comforting sound that once accompanied me during my creative revels on that old clunky Remington.

I grew used to rushing through a first draft, reworking it with pen in hand, retyping, reworking, retyping until I had my manuscript in what I had internally believed was reasonably acceptable for submission to my then agent. I used the services of a few freelance typists who had grown used to my hasty yet elaborate chicken marks. I had long ago discovered that the secret to good writing was rewriting. I rewrite like mad, changing dialogue, characters, plot points, reconsidering different ways of expressing the material; the subconscious is a very busy place, and every nuance, every thought, is constantly changing. Writing stories is like building a house with wooden blocks: remove one, and you must rearrange the supporting neighbors or the whole structure will collapse

Making the Transition

Because I spent a vast amount of time composing my novels in my basement writing room, I owned three Smith Corona portable typewriters. One was my primary work tool until its mechanism shouted for repairs, one was in reserve, and one was always in the shop. My fingers were invariably stained by carbon from used-up ribbons that constantly needed changing.

I was still in the advertising business in those days. I would get to my basement writing desk before six in the morning and write for about four hours before hustling off to my office for my regular workday; the pittance I earned from writing was hardly enough to support a growing family.

It was during my time in the advertising business that computers were proliferating. I now had the option to eliminate my freelance typists since I could compose and make changes directly on the screen, but if you were unable to break the habit of making changes on paper, printers were available.

One of my writing friends, a world famous photographer/writer, Fred Ward, was an advanced techie, and assured me that a computer was an enhancement rather than a hindrance, and finally, after much persuasion, I bought my first clunky computer in the early 1980’s. The writing program was called Wordstar and I attached a Hewlett Packard laser printer that could print out a few pages a minute, which I thought, at the time, was remarkable. Of course I kept my three Smith Coronas at the ready in case this technology failed me, and so I chugged away learning Wordstar.

Getting Over the Fear

Some of my writing friends continued to resist, and they often insisted that they were happy with the old ways of pen on paper or mechanical typewriter. In fact, many of them continued to compose that way and some still do; I have a number of writing friends that have refused to adapt under any circumstances. I suppose it is an age thing. After all, they argue, the greatest works of literature were composed with pen and paper. Were William Shakespeare or Charles Dickens inhibited by the lack of computer technology?

I must admit that it took a while to get over my fear. When I slowed down or met an obstacle while writing, I wondered whether or not the disruption was due to the new process and the difficulties of having to remember the new strokes on a computer keyboard. Thankfully, my earlier typing skills came in handy and after a few months I was able to write and rewrite to my heart’s content, which I continue to do today.

I suppose my story has been experienced by many writers across the globe who were plagued by similar fears. To a younger generation, many of whom are no longer taught the elements of penmanship, my experience could be laughable.

How do You Prefer to Write?

I am totally committed today to writing on my computer. It offers a writer a vast improvement especially in time saving and research. The creative process remains the same as it always was, requiring deep thought, constant improvement and extensive re-writing. But most of all, in terms of speed and convenience, it is an enormous help. Still, despite such improvements, if suddenly the electrical grid was destroyed and a complete power blackout would occur I would still continue my writing schedules. It is a necessary component of my life.

An old friend, John David Garcia, now deceased, once declared that the goal of life is to evolve into pure mind. He wrote a book called The Moral Society, and claimed that technology might one day bring us to pure mind. But a truly inspired and gifted writer, as has been proven over the centuries, does not need the geegaws of modern technology to create masterworks of great insight and benefit to the human species.

While it has made a vast difference in discoverability and marketing, giving opportunity to emerging writers to get into the publishing fray, I doubt if it has made one iota of difference in the quality of the offerings.

On that note, I want to know, how do you prefer to compose?

This article was also published on PICK THE BRAIN  and The Huffington Post 

 

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TARGET CHURCHILL: How a Bestselling Historical Thriller was Born

I am a member of the Lotos Club in Manhattan, a literary club celebrated for having Mark Twain as its most famous member. Apparently he had spent many happy hours with fellow members there in his declining years. A few years ago at Lotos event, we were regaled by James Humes, a distinguished professor, historian, Pulitzer Prize nominated author, and a Winston Churchill specialist. With a startling physical resemblance to Winston Churchill, Humes has traveled the world impersonating the great British wartime leader.

Humes knew that I was a novelist, and he was seated next to me at the event. After his performance, he informed me that he had written a novel. Although Humes had previously published numerous non-fiction books, he asked if I would collaborate with him on a novel, as he had never attempted a work of fiction before. I politely declined. I do not collaborate on my novels. I do my own research, and every novel for me is a solo performance. It has been my way of life for more than half a century. The process has sustained me through forty novels, short stories, plays, and essays.

I am truly a fan of Winston Churchill. I have indelible memories of his speeches, particularly the “Blood, Toil, Sweat and Tears” speech that I heard sitting in my grandparents’ back porch in 1940 after the British retreat on the mainland of Europe. I also remember listening to the Iron Curtain Speech he made in Missouri in 1946. These speeches were an inspiration and moved me immensely. I will never forget them. Winston Churchill is a hero of mine. And just like Churchill, Humes too never surrendered. He sent me his manuscript and called me relentlessly.

After putting his manuscript aside for months, I finally decided to be fair to his noble efforts and read it. It was what I had expected, a non-fiction writer’s honest and most excellent effort written without the skill of a fiction writer. The story was a fictional account of an imagined assassination attempt on Churchill’s life as he made his 1946 Iron Curtain speech in Westminster College in Fulton Missouri.

I became hooked by Humes’ idea and felt the stirrings of inspiration, which could fashion an exciting thriller. His research was impeccable, and I saw it as the foundation of a terrific story. After all, it was about an era that I had lived through and about a man who I revere. Humes’ manuscript blasted open the door of my imagination, and I looked forward to fleshing out the story with various plot points.

I agreed to redo the novel based on Humes’ brilliant core idea. My only proviso, as I insist for all of my novels, was that my work was to not be edited and accepted as is. We would share all publishing proceeds and the author byline. Thankfully he agreed. Indeed, I have enormous respect for James Humes’ insight and judgment. These qualities have been carefully preserved in our collaboration.

I spent months reading memoirs, accounts of the events leading up to the Iron Curtain speech; composing his speech in the British embassy in Washington; facts about Soviet spies who had penetrated the embassy during the war; the relationship between Churchill and Walter H. Thompson, and his lone bodyguard; details of the Soviet advance into Berlin; events surrounding Truman’s invitation to Churchill to speak at Westminster College in Missouri; the marvelous, true events about the famous poker game on the Presidential train en route to Missouri; and the Churchill family history at the time. It was all grist for the novelist’s mill. My research led to new characters and sub-plots. It was all so rich and intriguing that I could have spent a lifetime on the topic.

As a pioneer in digital publishing, I released Target Churchill through my own publishing company, Stonehouse Productions, which has so far has published thirteen of my novels and more to come. Target Churchill hit the Kindle bestseller list for Historical Fiction upon its release and this espionage thriller is now one of a slate of my novels indevelopment as movies with Grey Eagle Films and The Solution Entertainment Group.Both James C. Humes and I occasionally lecture on Target Churchill, on how the novel was conceived and the historical background that gave birth to the idea.

Every novelist is asked where they get their ideas. I have spent many years reflecting on that mystery with most of my work. Target Churchill is an exception. It came via a person, a persistent messenger who, like Winston Churchill, never surrendered.

In celebration of novel’s anniversary, We are offering a limited time promotion on Target Churchill, at $2.99 exclusively for Kindle readers.

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Weighing in on The Torture Report: Torture or Deprogramming?

Amid all the abrasive and conflicting arguments prompted by the so-called torture report released by Senator Feinstein, I am baffled by the absence of the crucial, indispensable question that never entered into the conversation, pro or con.

That question is simply why those men who were chosen to endure water-boarding never reacted to other less physically aggressive tactics designed to have revealed vital intelligence that could prevent more terrorist attacks.

If, as the report apparently alleges, less coercive measures were far more effective in extracting vital information, then why was it necessary to resort to more painful alternatives?

The gap between those who ran the CIA and who approved the aggressive tactics as a successful last resort method of extracting critical intelligence, and those who believed that such information could have been gotten by more benign methods, is wide and deep.

One must assume that these men had been deemed by the CIA’s most experienced experts as the highest level of captured Jihadist combatants who possessed vital information about the inner working of terrorist cells, plans, strategy, tactics, personnel, connections, financing, relationships, and other information useful for our defense against any future onslaught of terrorist attacks against Americans.

Surely they were subjected to more benign efforts of interrogation before the decision was taken to try more drastic methods. Why did they hold out? Why them?

In order to fully understand their motives, one must probe deeply into the theory of brainwashing, and how a cult can totally capture and control the motivations and actions of its followers.

Jihad in all its various offshoots, branches, and incarnations fits all the criteria that defines a cult, roughly meaning a group obsessed by a rigidly unifying self-generated and imposed belief that it propagates as the ultimate truth, and for whom the non-believer is a mortal enemy who must be eliminated.

Jihad is a death cult, and no different in concept and operation than thousands of other cults around the world. Its ultimate promise is that, by performing deeds in its name and welcoming death, one will be rewarded in the afterlife with an infinite existence dedicated to perpetual pleasure apparently of a sexual nature involving dozens of virgins. Hence its attraction for young sexually deprived young men. It has never been clear what the other gender has on offer in the paradise of the Jihad afterlife.

A Jihad cult is committed to kill all who do not commit to it. Fall into its clutches and fail to bow to its will and convert to its concepts and control, and you will be instantly assassinated without trial and without mercy. Beheadings are apparently a common method of disposal and proudly disseminated via the Internet. Indeed, viewing a beheading happen to a fellow citizen tests our own level of repugnance and outrage.

Like all cults, Jihad’s adherents have been brainwashed to believe that a supreme being, in spiritual or sometimes human form, has commanded them to achieve the goal of the cult, in this case, to take complete control of the planet and place it under the absolute control of this supreme being and its sycophants.

The most committed, the most brainwashed, are the cult leadership, the people who devise and plan these monstrous acts of killing. For murdering innocent people, as they did at the World Trade Center, their equally brainwashed subjects are lauded as martyrs who will be rewarded and welcomed into the afterlife. Their leaders cite their dedication and celebrate their entry into the paradise of perpetual pleasure.

Breaking into the mind of such brainwashed people is a daunting challenge. Some break faster than others. Sometimes it takes many months of intensive physical and mental provocation to unravel the mind of a cult follower. Some never break.

Deprogramming a brainwashed person takes skill, persistence, and very often, harsh tactics. Getting a brainwashed person to accept the reality of his locked mind is a massive task. Often the talking cure of psychiatry fails. Drug intervention, too, has been shown to be ineffective. Indeed, the very idea of deprogramming is controversial, and in our politically correct environment it has been branded a process that is designed to impede freedom of thought. Many former cult followers, their minds unlocked, militantly disagree with such a conclusion.

The brain is a complicated organ, and mapping and understanding its billions of cells is still in its infancy. Jihadists are the most difficult of all to unravel because they hide behind religion and pervert its teachings to cloak their twisted aims in the guise of religious duty. Many have been programmed from a young age and are reinforced with its precepts on a daily repetitive basis.

Intervention with tactics like waterboarding, where the brain might falsely determine that it is being faced with imminent death, have, according to those who have administered it, broken through the locked mind, bringing evidence of a subject acting in an effort to prolong his life. It seems logical that when brainwashing recedes and reality reemerges, the basic instinct of survival kicks in and a rational window opens, perhaps not permanently, but long enough of an opening that it restores some sanity into a closed mind.

Lawyers, police, psychiatrists, and others whose experience with more benign interrogatory methods has been fruitful cannot make judgments of the effectiveness of more extreme tactics unless they have experienced the fierce mental resistance of a brainwashed cult follower.

Certainly one must wonder what goes through the mind of a Jihad cultist who wields a knife to slice the head off an innocent man or woman who has done him no harm, or worse, what goes through the mind of a teenager who pulls the lever that blows him up along with the innocent people in the vicinity of his tripped bomb. If the person who acts in this way is not brainwashed, then how else can one rationally explain such an act?

These are the brainwashed monsters who have been programmed to destroy us, to obliterate our way of life, to murder us and our loved ones unless we become like them. Where can we look for protection if not from those charged with our defense, whether they are battlefield soldiers, or members of the intelligence services like the CIA?

After all, if we are to protect our vaunted values we must first survive to practice them.

Warren Adler has written extensively on cults and brainwashing. His well-reviewed recent novel CULT delves deeply into the attempt to rescue and deprogram cult victims. A new novel, Torture Man, is scheduled for publication in 2015.

The post Weighing in on The Torture Report: Torture or Deprogramming? appeared first on Warren Adler.

Torture or Deprogramming?

Amid all the abrasive and conflicting arguments prompted by the so-called torture report released by Senator Feinstein, I am baffled by the absence of the crucial, indispensable question that never entered into the conversation, pro or con.

That question is simply why those men who were chosen to endure water-boarding never reacted to other less physically aggressive tactics designed to have revealed vital intelligence that could prevent more terrorist attacks.

If, as the report apparently alleges, less coercive measures were far more effective in extracting vital information, then why was it necessary to resort to more painful alternatives?

The gap between those who ran the CIA and who approved the aggressive tactics as a successful last resort method of extracting critical intelligence, and those who believed that such information could have been gotten by more benign methods, is wide and deep.

One must assume that these men had been deemed by the CIA’s most experienced experts as the highest level of captured Jihadist combatants who possessed vital information about the inner working of terrorist cells, plans, strategy, tactics, personnel, connections, financing, relationships, and other information useful for our defense against any future onslaught of terrorist attacks against Americans.

Surely they were subjected to more benign efforts of interrogation before the decision was taken to try more drastic methods. Why did they hold out? Why them?

In order to fully understand their motives, one must probe deeply into the theory of brainwashing, and how a cult can totally capture and control the motivations and actions of its followers.

Jihad in all its various offshoots, branches, and incarnations fits all the criteria that defines a cult, roughly meaning a group obsessed by a rigidly unifying self-generated and imposed belief that it propagates as the ultimate truth, and for whom the non-believer is a mortal enemy who must be eliminated.

Jihad is a death cult, and no different in concept and operation than thousands of other cults around the world. Its ultimate promise is that, by performing deeds in its name and welcoming death, one will be rewarded in the afterlife with an infinite existence dedicated to perpetual pleasure apparently of a sexual nature involving dozens of virgins. Hence its attraction for young sexually deprived young men. It has never been clear what the other gender has on offer in the paradise of the Jihad afterlife.

A Jihad cult is committed to kill all who do not commit to it. Fall into its clutches and fail to bow to its will and convert to its concepts and control, and you will be instantly assassinated without trial and without mercy. Beheadings are apparently a common method of disposal and proudly disseminated via the Internet. Indeed, viewing a beheading happen to a fellow citizen tests our own level of repugnance and outrage.

Like all cults, Jihad’s adherents have been brainwashed to believe that a supreme being, in spiritual or sometimes human form, has commanded them to achieve the goal of the cult, in this case, to take complete control of the planet and place it under the absolute control of this supreme being and its sycophants.

The most committed, the most brainwashed, are the cult leadership, the people who devise and plan these monstrous acts of killing. For murdering innocent people, as they did at the World Trade Center, their equally brainwashed subjects are lauded as martyrs who will be rewarded and welcomed into the afterlife. Their leaders cite their dedication and celebrate their entry into the paradise of perpetual pleasure.

Breaking into the mind of such brainwashed people is a daunting challenge. Some break faster than others. Sometimes it takes many months of intensive physical and mental provocation to unravel the mind of a cult follower. Some never break.

Deprogramming a brainwashed person takes skill, persistence, and very often, harsh tactics. Getting a brainwashed person to accept the reality of his locked mind is a massive task. Often the talking cure of psychiatry fails. Drug intervention, too, has been shown to be ineffective. Indeed, the very idea of deprogramming is controversial, and in our politically correct environment it has been branded a process that is designed to impede freedom of thought. Many former cult followers, their minds unlocked, militantly disagree with such a conclusion.

The brain is a complicated organ, and mapping and understanding its billions of cells is still in its infancy. Jihadists are the most difficult of all to unravel because they hide behind religion and pervert its teachings to cloak their twisted aims in the guise of religious duty. Many have been programmed from a young age and are reinforced with its precepts on a daily repetitive basis.

Intervention with tactics like waterboarding, where the brain might falsely determine that it is being faced with imminent death, have, according to those who have administered it, broken through the locked mind, bringing evidence of a subject acting in an effort to prolong his life. It seems logical that when brainwashing recedes and reality reemerges, the basic instinct of survival kicks in and a rational window opens, perhaps not permanently, but long enough of an opening that it restores some sanity into a closed mind.

Lawyers, police, psychiatrists, and others whose experience with more benign interrogatory methods has been fruitful cannot make judgments of the effectiveness of more extreme tactics unless they have experienced the fierce mental resistance of a brainwashed cult follower.

Certainly one must wonder what goes through the mind of a Jihad cultist who wields a knife to slice the head off an innocent man or woman who has done him no harm, or worse, what goes through the mind of a teenager who pulls the lever that blows him up along with the innocent people in the vicinity of his tripped bomb. If the person who acts in this way is not brainwashed, then how else can one rationally explain such an act?

These are the brainwashed monsters who have been programmed to destroy us, to obliterate our way of life, to murder us and our loved ones unless we become like them. Where can we look for protection if not from those charged with our defense, whether they are battlefield soldiers, or members of the intelligence services like the CIA?

After all, if we are to protect our vaunted values we must first survive to practice them.

Warren Adler has written extensively on cults and brainwashing. His well-reviewed recent novel CULT delves deeply into the attempt to rescue and deprogram cult victims. A new novel, Torture Man, is scheduled for publication in 2015.

The post Torture or Deprogramming? appeared first on Warren Adler.