Shootout At Miracle Valley

A little over one hundred years after the legendary shootout at the OK Corral, a radical South Chicago preacher named Frances Thomas moved to Miracle Valley, Arizona. She brought not only her congregation, but also a dangerous cocktail of fanaticism, faith healing, bigotry, and dynamite. Believing that God had called her to take over Miracle Valley, Pastor Thomas and her cult of followers set out to do just that -- with explosive results.

It began with a frantic 911 call from a woman in a dusty Arizona border town. A gang claiming to be affiliated with the Border Patrol had shot her husband and daughter. It was initially assumed that the murders were products of border drug wars ravaging the Southwest until the leader of one of the more prominent offshoots of the Minutemen movement was arrested for plotting the home invasion as part of a scheme to finance a violent antigovernment border militia. And Hell Followed With Her: Crossing to the Dark Side of the American Border is award-winning journalist David Neiwert's riveting account of the life and death of America's Minutemen -- and the terrifying story and psychology of movement leader Shawna Forde. A compulsive and brilliant portrait of cold-blooded killers and true believers, And Hell Followed With Her is at once a horrifying crime story and a frontline report on America's nativist foot soldiers.

For over twenty years, ranchers on our southern border have been overrun with smugglers, criminals, illegal immigrants, and terrorists. Law enforcement personnel have joined the ranchers to expose the government policies that have maintained an open, lawless, and deadly border.

An investigative reporter explores an infamous case where an obsessive and unorthodox search for enlightenment went terribly wrong. When thirty-eight-year-old Ian Thorson died from dehydration and dysentery on a remote Arizona mountaintop in 2012, The New York Times reported the story under the headline: "Mysterious Buddhist Retreat in the Desert Ends in a Grisly Death." Scott Carney, a journalist and anthropologist who lived in India for six years, was struck by how Thorson’s death echoed other incidents that reflected the little-talked-about connection between intensive meditation and mental instability. Using these tragedies as a springboard, Carney explores how those who go to extremes to achieve divine revelations—and undertake it in illusory ways—can tangle with madness. He also delves into the unorthodox interpretation of Tibetan Buddhism that attracted Thorson and the bizarre teachings of its chief evangelists: Thorson’s wife, Lama Christie McNally, and her previous husband, Geshe Michael Roach, the supreme spiritual leader of Diamond Mountain University, where Thorson died. Carney unravels how the cultlike practices of McNally and Roach and the questionable circumstances surrounding Thorson’s death illuminate a uniquely American tendency to mix and match eastern religious traditions like LEGO pieces in a quest to reach an enlightened, perfected state, no matter the cost. Aided by Thorson’s private papers, along with cutting-edge neurological research that reveals the profound impact of intensive meditation on the brain and stories of miracles and black magic, sexualized rituals, and tantric rites from former Diamond Mountain acolytes, A Death on Diamond Mountain is a gripping work of investigative journalism that reveals how the path to enlightenment can be riddled with danger.

This book appears to represent the first attempt at a truly comprehensive biographical approach to the evangelist named A. A. Allen with emphasis on his ministry and the legacy of that ministry. Allen could be considered a controversial character and even after many years, well over four decades since his death, emotions run high regarding this man and his life and character. Some rush to condemn him while others seek to justify him. In both

Migrant Deaths in the Arizona Desert addresses the tragic results of government policies on immigration. The book's central question is why are migrants dying on our border? The authors constitute a multidisciplinary group reflecting on the issues of death, migration, and policy.