Featured Books by Dan Armstrong
- As the third century before the birth of Christ draws to a close, Rome, an emerging world power, and Carthage, the leading mercantile state in the Mediterranean, clash for the second time in forty years. The first time it was a territorial dispute in Sicily. Now it's strictly revenge, as Hannibal Barca, one the greatest field marshals in all of history, dares to take 34 elephants and 40,000 soldiers through the Alps into Italy, set on the complete destruction of Rome–with the prize nothing less than world dominance. The ensuing sixteen-year conflict, known as the Second Punic War or the War with Hannibal, more than any other collision of world powers in ancient times, will cast the fate and direction of the western world.
- The Eyes of Archimedes is a historical trilogy set during this pivotal moment in antiquity. Timon Leonidas, a young Greek, narrates the story of the war through the lens of his own life, detailing his ascent from an enslaved refugee to an esteemed mapmaker in the Roman army.
- BOOK ONE: THE SIEGE OF SYRACUSE– A Novel by Dan Armstrong
- Rome is three years into its second war with Carthage, when the Roman General Marcus Claudius Marcellus lays siege to the Carthaginian controlled city-state of Syracuse, home of the famous engineer and inventor Archimedes. Three times the Roman forces are turned away like toy soldiers by Archimedes' war machines. Unwilling to concede, Marcellus blockades the city determined to starve Syracuse into submission. Read more about the novel. Paperback or kindle available at Amazon.com.
- BOOK TWO: THE DEATH OF MARCELLUS– A Novel by Dan Armstrong
- Rome's second war with Carthage is in its eighth year. Hannibal's army, yet to know defeat, roams the Italian peninsula like they own it, ravaging the farmland and pressuring Latin cities into submission. Marcus Claudius Marcellus, just back from his siege of Syracuse, demands that the Roman Senate give him an army to confront Hannibal and force him out of Italy. Over the next two years, Marcellus and his two legions pursue Hannibal's army in a subtle game of cat and mouse. Three times the two armies clash with no decisive outcome. Facing recall in Rome for his inability to defeat Hannibal, Marcellus vows before the People's Assembly to destroy Hannibal's army in the coming spring. Read more about the novel. Paperback or kindle available at Amazon.com.
- BOOK THREE: ZAMA– A Novel by Dan Armstrong
- Thirteen years have passed since Hannibal's invasion of Italy, and he's still there, plundering the farmland and terrorizing the inhabitants. Publius Cornelius Scipio, recently back from casting the Carthaginians out of Spain, now wants a chance at Hannibal. Fighting strong resistance in the Roman Senate, Scipio argues for an opportunity to invade Africa and besiege Carthage, promising this will force Hannibal to leave Italy and come to the rescue of his homeland. Read more about the novel. Paperback or kindle available at Amazon.com.
- PRINCETON CHARLIE'S GOT THE BLUES
- Princeton University underwent considerable change between the spring of 1968 and the summer of 1972. The number of Black undergraduates quadrupled to nearly 400 and admissions were opened to women, whose numbers would reach 500 by the fall of 1971. But the changes were more than increased diversity. The issues of anti-war politics, the environment, sexual freedom, and drug use were the currency of the day and ripped through colleges across the country, Princeton included. On May 4, 1970, the student body voted to shut down the university as a statement against the war in Vietnam. Old school Princeton was no more. Read more about the novel. Available as paperback or kindle at Amazon.com for $17.00 or as a Kindle for $6.99.
THE EUGENE TRILOGY
- The Eugene Trilogy is a genre-crossing set of murder mysteries, each told through a different genre: one as psy-fy, one as crime fiction, one as fantasy. The three volumes share interlocking characters and take place in the same fictional Eugene, Oregon between 1970 and 1990. Think imagination run wild.
- Read review of The Eugene Trilogy in the Eugene Weekly.
- BLAKE COLLEGE
- It's Eugene, Oregon 1970. Anti-war demonstrations and violence at the University of Oregon share the headlines with the Oregon track team, led by their fabled coach Bill Bowerman and star runner Steve Prefontaine. At the same time, Eugene is becoming a magnet for a generation of young people headed west, seeking a new American dream in the blossoming counterculture of long hair, free love, and psycho-activating drugs. A small group of young visionaries decide to start an experimental college in an old Victorian house in north Eugene. William Blake College, school without walls, is dedicated to giving its students tools for living in the new world–meditation, yoga, organic gardening, and communal living. Two women, Rain Adams and Adrienne Stephens, provide the inspiration to get the school up and running, but before the completion of its first year, one of the students is accused of bombing two buildings at the U of O. Read more about the novel. Paperback or kindle available at Amazon.com.
- Read review of BLAKE COLLEGE in December 12,2019 edition of Eugene Weekly.
- Listen to interview of Dan Armstrong about BLAKE COLLEGE on KBOO radio's Between the Covers.
- SPOTIFY: Listen to Pacific Northwest Weird interview Dan Armstrong about his background and the writing of Blake College
- QUICKSAND
- When three young women at the same high school in Eugene, Oregon commit suicide in little over a year, many in the community connect the suicides with the stress of getting good grades for admission to elite colleges. While the local police department treats the suicides as individual cases of emotional breakdown, Travis Hardy and his friend Steve Kelly, both sophomores at the high school, discover evidence that the suicides are more than what they seem and are intimately connected. Instead of going directly to the police, Travis and Steve decide to investigate the three suicides themselves, hoping to find proof for what they believe is a triple murder. Read more about the novel. Paperback or kindle available at Amazon.com.
- STELLA: THE MUSHROOM GIRL FROM OUTER SPACE
- Stella Walters-Smith is a senior in high school and lives on a dairy farm in western Oregon with her adoptive parents. By something more than chance, she discovers she shares consciousness with a being from another planet. Already socially isolated living on a farm and wary of being too different from other students, she keeps this secret to herself and finds joy in the lush forests around the farm, communing with the plants and the animals and the fungi, knowing one day her secret must be revealed. Read more about the novel. Paperback or kindle available at Amazon.com.
Table of Contents
- RECENT INTERVIEW OF DAN ARMSTRONG
- Gerry Fialka of Probably Wrong About Everything interviews Dan Armtrong of Mud City Press on YouTube, January 20, 2023.
- A CONVERSATION WITH KEN BABBS
- Listen to audio file: Dan Armstrong, owner and webmaster of Mud City Press, talks with Ken Babbs, Merry Pranster and author, about his new book CRONIES: Adventures with Ken Kesey, Neal Cassady, the Merry Pranksters, and the Greatful Dead.
- ASLEEP AT THE WHEEL OF SPACESHIP EARTH
- We enter the twenty-first century facing several critical global management issues. Concerns about carbon dioxide emissions, petroleum depletion, the extinction of plant and animal species, a growing human population, loss of arable land, water rights, and increasing quantities of toxins in the environment top the list. Asleep at the Wheel of Spaceship Earth addresses these issues through five perspectives, climate, energy, community, global food resources, and economics, providing an overview and several in depth articles on each.
- THE LANE COUNTY FAIRGROUNDS REPAIR PROJECT
- The Lane County Fairgrounds Repair Project has been working on a proposal to transform the Lane County Fairgrounds into a sustainable campus since March of 2008. The proposal is presented here as a conceptual plan and a set of design objectives. While the proposal is well-advanced and quite detailed, it remains a work in progress and a steadily evolving vision.
- BROKEN GLASS, BROKEN TRUST
- "There is no way of knowing, only uncertainty as dark as our lawn at three in the morning."–Award-winning Oregon writer ROBERT LEO HEILMAN reflects on the recent acts of violence targeting him and his family in Douglas County.
- MY OCTOPUS TEACHER
- MY OCTOPUS TEACHER is both a gorgeous wildlife documentary and a moving tale of how a man in crisis found joy and purpose through his immersion in nature and a remarkable relationship with an octopus.
- HOW TO CHANGE YOUR MIND: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence
- Michael Pollan's latest book, HOW TO CHANGE YOUR MIND, reopens the discussion of psychedelic drugs, including commentary on Pollan's own experiences with mushrooms, LSD, and DMT. Dan Armstrong reviews this fascinating book by one of the world's most respected science writers.
- THE SOUTHERN WILLAMETTE VALLEY BEAN AND GRAIN PROJECT (Index)
- We hear the slogan "eat local" over and over again, but what does it really mean? It's more than just eating fresher food. It's about preserving local food systems. It's about food security and common sense management of the pantry. Here in Oregon's Willamette Valley we have the agricultural potential to feed the valley residents twice over. And yet we grow rye grass and fescue for grass seed and ninety-five percent of what we eat in this fertile valley is imported. With the price of fossil fuels on the rise, this makes no agricultural or economic sense at all. Harry MacCormack of Sunbow Farm in Corvallis, Oregon has conceived a plan to turn this around. The Southern Willamette Valley Bean and Grain Project is a step by step strategy to rebuild a local food system, using organic beans and grains as the foundation.
- DAN ARMSTRONG AND HARRY MACCORMACK INTERVIEWED ON PEAK MOMENT TV
- The Yuba Girls came up to Corvallis a while back and did this great video interview with Dan Armstrong and Harry MacCormack. Dan talks about his novel PRAIRIE FIRE and Harry gives perspective on the Southern Willamette Valley Bean and Grain Project.
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RELOCALIZING EDEN
- A region's capacity to produce, process, and distribute some significant portion of its own food has always been a measure of social and economic stability, but as we face the unknowns of peak oil and climate change, securing local food resources will become one of our highest priorities. Oregon's Willamette Valley provides an excellent case-study for the relocalization to a food system.
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REVISITING THE LIMITS OF GROWTH: Could the Club of Rome have been correct, after all?
- This is an energy policy white paper written in October of 2000 by Matthew R. Simmons. In the next year, Simmons would be a member of the Bush-Cheney Energy Transition Advisory Committee and the Independent Task Force on Strategic Energy Policy. Let there be no doubt that peak oil was a critical part of all energy discussions in the Cheney-Bush White House and a central factor behind the invasion of Iraq. Video Clip: Matthew Simmons on CNBC 3/7/2008
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JOURNAL OF NORTH AMERICAN COLLEGES AND TEACHERS OF AGRICULTURE REVIEWS PRAIRIE FIRE
- "PRAIRIE FIRE," writes Charles Francis of the Department of Agronomy at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, "is more than a totally engaging story that captivates the reader as if it were a Dan Brown suspense adventure. It reflects careful research and analysis of a modern-day systemic problem in the global food system, and provides a strong political statement that questions the organization of our most important industry as well as our basic values." Read this review or other reviews of Dan Armstrong's novels.
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CALIFORNIA GRANGE REVIEWS PRAIRIE FIRE!
- "What happens when enough grain farmers across America, especially the Midwest, decide that the convoluted structure of the economic system between the small, independent family farmer and the end-user is unfair?" asks Lanny Cotler in his review of Dan Armstrong's novel PRAIRIE FIRE in the California Grange's Newsletter. "That's the beginning of PRAIRIE FIRE," Cotler continues, "and while it takes you back to the thrilling days of yester-year–when farmers all across America rose up and formed, out of necessity, the National Grange of the Order of the Patrons of Husbandry!–it also pulls you hard into the crisis felt by small and medium-sized farmers today." Read this review or other reviews of Dan Armstrong's novels.
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LANE COUNTY LOCAL FOOD MARKET ANALYSIS
- The Community Planning Workshop at the University of Oregon spent eight months in 2010 researching and writing a local food market analysis for Lane County. This work was funded by the City of Eugene, Lane County, and the Eugene Water and Electric Board and was made public in the fall of 2010. The Lane County Local Food Market Analysis now serves as Lane County's most complete evaluation of our local food system. The entire document is available here as a pdf.
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THE HISTORY OF THE PARK BLOCKS IN DOWNTOWN EUGENE, OREGON
- This webpage contains a collection of legal documents and maps pertaining to the Eugene Skinner and Charnel Mulligan land donations to Lane County in 1856 and the creation of the Park Blocks in downtown Eugene.
- BUY A BOOK
- MUD BLOG
- Mud City Press adds more hot air to the blogosphere. Current blog: GEOENGINEERING: ONE RISK VERSUS ANOTHER
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SHORT STORIES
- In-house writer Dan Armstrong offers readers five pieces of short fiction.
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BOOK REVIEWS
- Our literary editor takes a look at books old and new, hoping to inspire a read or offer a new perspective.
- THE WORK OF WILLIAM H. KÖTKE
- Mud City Press provides access to the visionary work of William H. Kötke, including reviews of his books and several of his most recent articles.
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MUD CITY PRESS ARCHIVES
- Mud City Press's online magazine maintains this archive of past blogs.
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CONTACT MUD CITY PRESS
- Send us an e-mail. Pat us on the back. Straighten us out. Tells us your thoughts.
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SPECIAL THANKS TO MARK HENSON AND SACRED LIGHT STUDIOS
- Mud City Press has included six excellent paintings by Mark to enhance the ASLEEP AT THE WHEEL OF SPACESHIP EARTH section of this website.
- SPECIAL THANKS TO MARTINA HOFFMAN
- Mud City Press has used four of Martina's visionary paintings to illustrate THE FORTUNE TELLER'S FORTUNE, a short story by Dan Armstrong
