The King Of Good Intentions

Set in Los Angeles in the early 90s, the novel chronicles the early days of an indie band as they meet, practice, make their first record, and get their first break/big gig. It’s also the story of the the flowering love affair between John and Jenny, the two charming if troubled guitarists/singers in the band. John is by day a misanthropic substitute teacher in the zany, sometimes horrific LA Unified School District; Jenny is an mysterious recovering child prodigy. Along the way, the couple and their bandmates make momentous discoveries about themselves and the Hollywood milieu in which they struggle to succeed, a world peopled by narcissistic actors, wannabe screenwriters, pretentious musicians, weirdo fans, crazy neighbors -- and an emu. The King of Good Intentions was originally to have been published by Henry Rollins’s 2.13.61 press in 1999. When Rollins decided henceforth to publish only his own work, Fredrick set the novel aside to focus on his musical and teaching career. Now it will finally make its long overdue debut.

The oft-used adjectives--"rollicking," "uproarious," "zany," etc.--don't half do justice to the world John Andrew Fredrick has created in his The King of Good Intentions trilogy. In this, the final volume of the series, the author's madcap, kaleidoscopic, dazzling take on love (and love triangles) and life and an up-and-coming indie rock band called The Weird Sisters in 90's Los Angeles comes full circle as the story of principal bandmates and paramours John and Jenny (plus the mysterious Katie who comes between them) reaches its thrilling conclusion: an ending that, as you'll find, bears out the T.S. Eliot line "in my end is my beginning." Lyrical, heartbreaking, discursive/digressive, startlingly as poetic as it is laugh aloud funny, part three of The King is sure to draw favorable comparisons to the Russian-American master who loved tennis and chess and to play elaborate games with his readers; as well as to a certain bandanna-sporting/tennis-loving genius-writer we lost so tragically some time ago now. As The Los Angeles Review of Books has observed about Fredrick's work: "Come to him, you omnivorous readers with strong opinions. Follow him from A to B, and you'll laugh, furrow your brow, and maybe raise an objection or two. It's not a dangerous trip, but blink and you'll surely miss something."

We often struggle to answer the question: What is the right thing to do here? Good Intentions suggests that it is possible to do good in economic matters if we begin with the right assumptions (and begins to ask the right questions): —Is greed ever good? —How can we give poor kids a million bucks? —How did Ben and Jerry get so rich? —Is capitalism ruining the environment? —Do immigrants take American jobs? Our actions can produce outcomes that reflect what we value.

A thousand years of legal protections against tyranny are being stolen right before our eyes. Under the guise of good intentions, personal liberties as old as the Magna Carta have become casualties in the wars being waged on pollution, drugs, white-collar crime, and all of the other real and imagined social ills. The result: innocent people caught up in a bureaucratic web that destroys lives and livelihoods; businesses shuttered because of victimless infractions; a justice system that values coerced pleas over the search for truth; bullying police agencies empowered to confiscate property without due process. "A devastating indictment of our current system of justice." — Milton Friedman In this provocative book, Paul Craig Roberts and Lawrence M. Stratton show how the law, which once shielded us from the government, has now become a powerful weapon in the hands of overzealous prosecutors and bureaucrats. Lost is the foundation upon which our freedom rest—the intricate framework of Constitutional limits that protect our property, our liberty, and our lives. Roberts and Stratton convincingly argue that this abuse of government power doesn't have ideological boundaries. Indeed, conservatives and liberals alike use prosecutors, regulators, and courts to chase after their own favorite "devils," to seek punishment over justice and expediency over freedom. The authors present harrowing accounts of people both rich and poor, of CEOs and blue-collar workers who have fallen victim to the tyranny of good intentions, who have lost possessions, careers, loved ones, and sometimes even their lives. This book is a sobering wake-up call to reclaim that which is rightly ours—liberty protected by the rule of law.

The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have highlighted again the precarious situation aid agencies find themselves in, caught as they are between the firing lines of the hostile parties, as they are trying to alleviate the plight of the civilian populations. This book offers an illuminating case study from a previous conflict, the Italo-Ethiopian war of 1935-36, and of the humanitarian operation of the Red Cross during this period. Based on fresh material from Red Cross and Italian military archives, the author examines highly controversial subjects such as the Italian bombings of Red Cross field hospitals, the treatment of Prisoners of War by the two belligerents; and the effects of Fascist Italy’s massive use of poison gas against the Ethiopians. He shows how Mussolini and his ruthless regime, throughout the seven-month war, manipulated the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) – the lead organization of the Red Cross in times of war, helped by the surprising political naïveté of its board. During this war the ICRC redefined its role in a debate, which is fascinating not least because of its relevance to current events, about the nature of humanitarian action. The organization decided to concern itself exclusively with matters falling under the Geneva Conventions and to give priority to bringing relief over expressing protest. It was a decision that should have far-reaching consequences, particularly for the period of World War II and the fate of Jews in Nazi concentration camps.

Always visions of other lands haunt my ravaged mind and the ghosts of old lovers swirl in the fog of my brain. Habits and routine are my captors, the jailers that speak to me of bounds, fences and walls, yet my soul flies on the wild wind, searching for a home. I long to burn across new terrain like a meteor crashing through the dull and nebulous layers of this tired earths’ atmosphere. When shall I walk among the foothills of the Old Gods and feel new breezes blow through this shattered mind? To set the senses reeling and lose myself in the swirling fog of new emotion. Everything is growing, bursting out of itself like an explosion and creatures mass and swarm at some silent command. Is this the hand of God stirring his pot of wonders? And then the storms and the wild winds, the constant rains although warm- still crazy and without reason. All of nature here spinning and weaving, screaming in the minds of men. Here is the torrent, the onrush of life, the lesson to be learned, easily given and so readily taken up by poets and dreamers. Wild living, careless exaggeration, wonders of creation, the Psalms of the fields and forests. Listen then, listen to the songs and hear their frantic message, for there is a force greater than any man can know that is flowing faster than an avalanche. Eye and limb, branch and spore- nature has gone mad and man is afraid because the spirits of old lives are whistling in the wind.