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by Gene H. Bell-Villada (Author)
Twenty-five years after the original publication of Gene Bell-Villada's delightfully scathing dissection of higher education, left-right politics and the mass media, life has imitated art to an almost uncomfortable degree. But in today's highly polarized and politicized social climate The Carlos Chadwick Mystery lambastes American culture with refreshingly bipartisan gusto. Indeed, the satire is so sharp, you may not feel the cut. Bell-Villada skewers bluebloods and Cold-War liberals in a single stroke with this downright prescient riff on "balanced" journalism and situational ethics. Just who is this Carlos Chadwick--and isn't he being intolerant by insisting on his version of reality, based on something as subjective as international news reports from just a few witnesses? Don't the rest of us have an equal right to stick our heads in the sand if that's what we want to do? What about our freedom of expression? What about our right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? If hearing or reading that stuff makes us unhappy, don't we have a right to ignore it?
Funny? Yes. Ridiculous? Not these days. Amador Publishers, LLC is proud to re-issue The Carlos Chadwick Mystery in digital format. This cleverly constructed satire is sure to make you laugh, think, raise your eyebrows, blush a little... and laugh some more.
"For anybody who has lived through, or wondered about the 'culture wars' on U.S. campuses, THE CARLOS CHADWICK MYSTERY casts the debate in an entirely new light. Although the book is set in the 1970s, the issues that it deals with are as alive and relevant today as they were decades ago. The novel plays with the ideas of liberal objectivity and respect for different 'perspectives' through the eyes of a student who sees the whole approach as a defense of moral and political alienation and paralysis."
"Raised in Latin America, in a family that would today be called 'bi-racial' or 'bi-cultural, ' Carlos comes to see the culture of intellectual detachment on his college campus as increasingly absurd in the face of U.S. actions in Vietnam. Both Latin American and U.S. culture and politics are presented in their brilliant diversity, and with wicked parody. The voices and characters are disquietingly real, the satires drawn to a perfection that leaves the reader marveling. The human portraits take each character just a shade beyond the people we know and interact with every day. The book evokes its locations, which range from a quiet New England campus to Paris and Caracas, with vivid color and detail.
"Since I first read the book--and I have to confess to reading seven or eight times by now--I have been continually amazed at the way real-life events and people seem to have been taken 'straight out of CARLOS CHADWICK.' Life, politics, and academics will never look the same after you read this book."
--Avi Chomsky, Associate Professor of History, Salem State College, Massachusetts
"Intriguing, and for those of us already disillusioned with the common American ideologies, even fun."
-- Mike Gunderloy, Fact Sheet Five
"Seductively readable, page by page. The portrait of the small New England liberal arts college is wonderful, and Livie has to be the girl you love to hate." -- Mary Lusky Friedman, Wake Forest University
