Unlikely Brothers

“You don’t look like brothers . . .” Peace activist and cofounder of the Enough Project, John Prendergast is known as a champion of human rights in Africa. But the not-so-public face of J.P. is the life he’s led as a Big Brother to Michael Mattocks. As a curious, driven, and emotionally wounded twenty-year-old, J.P. made the life-changing decision to form a “Big Brother/Little Brother” relationship with then seven-year-old Michael, who was living out of plastic bags and drifting from one homeless shelter to the next with his mother and siblings. Lacking a connection with his own brother and distancing himself from a disastrous relationship with his father, J.P. formed a unique bond with Michael the moment they met. Michael and J.P. became like family, with Michael and some of his siblings even living with J.P. one summer. In the years that followed, J.P. took Michael and his brothers on outings, whether it was fishing, playing basketball, patronizing cheap restaurants, or going on road trips. This friendship would continue for over twenty-five years as the two coped with varying degrees of violence, instability, and trauma in their own lives. Told in duet, Unlikely Brothers follows Michael as he grows up on the tough streets of Washington, D.C., where as a young teenager he watched his best friend get shot, dropped out of school, and started dealing crack cocaine shortly thereafter. By sixteen, Michael had become the kingpin of his neighborhood, guns and drugs always close at hand. Meanwhile, J.P. was traveling to and from African war zones. J.P. offered Michael a refuge from the streets, never really confronting the gravity of what Michael was going through in his adolescence. In turn, Michael afforded J.P. an escape from his own turbulent personal and professional life. As the years go by, the two swoop in and out of each other’s lives, slowly disconnecting as they disappear into their respective worlds, but making their way back to each other at a critical moment for both of them. The effect the two have on each other is extremely significant to both of their paths to redemption. Inspirational and deeply moving, Unlikely Brothers beautifully showcases how life’s most random moments can often be the most profound.

This book discusses the archaeology and heritage of the German military presence in Finnish Lapland during the Second World War, framing this northern, overlooked WWII material legacy from the nearly forgotten Arctic front as ‘dark heritage’ – a concrete reminder of Finns siding with the Nazis, often seen as polluting ‘war junk’ that ruins the ‘pristine natural beauty’ of Lapland’s wilderness. The scholarship herein provides fresh perspectives to contemporary discussions on heritage perception and ownership, indigenous rights, community empowerment, relational ontologies and also the ongoing worldwide refugee crisis.

This book brings solutions to a very great list of hitherto unsolved chronological and synchronisation problems. The reason why those solutions could be found lies in the extensive research the author made in old and often rare texts instead of limiting himself to the near exclusive source of the Bible. Ample use has been made of information that is available in works like the Books of Enoch, The Apocrypha, The Legends of the Jews, The Seder Olam, the Book of Jasher and many more, as well as in the texts from known historians like Herodotus and the famous Jewish historian and priest Flavius Josephus Just a few of the many special findings are: - The real reason why Joseph was so popular with the Pharaoh. - Sarah was not Abraham's (half)-sister. - Moses was uncircumcised and even forbade the ritual for 40 years. - Terah was not 70 years old when he begat Abraham. - The exact period of the Judges: when they started and when they ended. - A solution for the verse of the "about 450 years" of Paul's speech. - Why did the Lord God give form and then blew life into Adam? - Eve was not made out of Adam's rib but from another body part - A solution to the "impossible synchronism" of Judah and his sons. - Enoch made not one but 4 trips to Heaven. - The definitive answer: why did King Josiah attack Necho II? - Why did King Ahab not fight at Qarqar? And many more. The book has a unique style. It has nothing of the "study book", difficult to understand texts. The subject is serious, well researched, and treated with respect. But that does not mean that it cannot be presented at a fast moving pace, in easy to read style with here and there even a bit of humour. The purpose of the book is to prove that the promise that the Lord God made to Adam was kept. It held that there would be exactly 5500 years between the arrival of Adam in this world and the arrival of Christ. Every person who was of importance in that timespan has been visited. For every single one there are his years of birth and death or the years of his rule. Every person has a short story about some important part of his life, his actions or the influence he had on the history of the Hebrew people that lived in that period.