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About the Author .. . Readings, Lectures, Events *_________* .. . . .. . . .	. . . . offering a brilliant selection of fiction, non-fiction and poetry by a living American author, *Richard Shain Cohen* ____________________________________________________________________________ . . Experience an intensely personal history of life in our nation, in our times... as it was lived, and is being lived, by a passionate mind *Select, review, and experience: These books reach into private experience to record where we were on the eve of the war, under attack, changing and striving... through the political machinations which began to change us... through the assassinations, into today... but also: in the quiet of the forests and near the ocean, reflecting on love and spirituality, humanity and relationship, citizenship and responsibility, and on the strife and bonds of family. . . The BOOKS:* Please click on each image at the left to review, select, sample, order: .. *THE FORGOTTEN LONGFELLOW: Man In The Shadows* A snapshot of 1800’s America that reads like an adventure story: Alexander Longfellow Senior’s life of exploration as coast surveyor, charting northern Maine borders among Indians and trappers, sailing around Cape Horn, surveying the South ravaged by Civil war, and mingling with John Quincy Adams, Dolley Madison, President Polk in the drawing-rooms of Washington D.C. Many amusing letters reveal rare glimpses of courtship and family life in Maine’s country manor-houses. An engrossing story from a man hitherto eclipsed by his famous poet brother and ignored by historians. A landmark book, a coffee-table journey and a visual treat: gorgeous maps, drawings, photographs. *______________________________. . . BE STILL, MY SOUL* "It's the eve of Word War II. Hitler is on the march, swallowing entire countries, extinguishing the lights of Europe. Three thousand miles away another war is brewing for the soul of a Boston family with tyrants of its own. Thus sets the stage for Be Still, My Soul, Richard Shain Cohen's novel based, in part, on real-life war letters sent by his brothers and an uncle from Europe and British Palestine....There's no room for gray in a world fighting between good and evil, and Cohen is masterful at conjuring the mood of America circa in the first half of the 1940s. Close your eyes and you'll hear the Andrews Sisters. You 'll feel the cohesion of war-time Christmas in New York-soldiers in uniforms, women with shoulder pads scurrying in the cold past department store windows on their way to give blood for the boys overseas. The fast-paced narrative is alternately heart-racing and heartbreaking; struggling for survival in the desert against Rommel, persevering on a home front missing sons and fathers who will never come home..." . .______________________________ *PETAL ON A BLACK BOUGH* In a form little used by novelists except for the most imaginative, here is a fascinating fusion of Celtic mythology with reality, reliving World War I to the start of World War II, a period that includes the Irish struggle for independence. The mythological warrior-goddess Medb mingles with other vivid characters from this critical period in world history to affirm the futility of war.... but in the telling, adolescents such as we were or knew mature suddenly as their hunger for love, independence, truth and fulfillment are tested sorely under the guns of war. As in all well-wrought epics, minute conflicts mirror global ones and relationships reveal mankind's shifting commitments to ethics and morality.
	*MONDAY: END OF THE WEEK* Monday is a day of deception, conspiracy, cowardice, self-indulgence; the day of kindness, love, courage during the early- and mid- twentieth century eras... time of anti-lesbianism, glass ceilings, and other issues emerging or revealed to roil the national scene. Drawing upon people from his own experience — and from characters in others of his novels in which they appear — Cohen presents real, believable people in America academia and locations in Europe to battle through the recognizeable conflicts in which they find themselves, placing this book into the family saga which his other novels also reveal and explore. END OF THE WEEK satisfies our thirst for justice, in that courage, endurance, and love triumph over cowardice, conspiracy, and degeneracy; and intertwined persons sustain or destroy themselves by self-indulgence or commitment to social benefit.
. .	. *ONLY GOD CAN MAKE A TREE* Cohen again celebrates the living memory and rich life of his family, this time in a presentation of poetry by himself and his now-deceased brother, Alfred R Cohen.In style and format the contrasts are clear; but there is revealed a deeply shared focus on the continuity, regeneration, comfort and intense beauty of nature. They contemplate the manifestations of the universal and draw their individual conclusions; while presented together, the poems give us a moving dialog which continues past death. "What poetry should be -- a meeting of the cerebral and the sensuous; a dismantling of dulling cliches and offering in their place stirring visual insights into our doubts and fears and joys."

	*AND IN THE MAKING.....*
	. HEALING AFTER DARK: a true story of a pioneer in social medicine: Cohen presents the saga of his father's monumental achievement, in the man's own words. STAY TUNED for an announcement of its release later in 2010.
	*BlackBoughBooks.com is maintained and edited by GalleryArtship.com and hosted by Systame.com...and no parts thereof may be removed, copied or used by anyone without the written consent of ARTSHIP.* Richard Shain Cohen's books are sold by ARTSHIPpublishing.com We welcome your interest, inquiries and comments:** EMAIL US

offering a brilliant selection of fiction, non-fiction and poetry by a living American author, Richard Shain Cohen

____________________________________________________________________________

Experience an intensely personal history of life in our nation, in our times... as it was lived, and is being lived, by a passionate mind

Select, review, and experience: These books reach into private experience to record where we were on the eve of the war, under attack, changing and striving... through the political machinations which began to change us... through the assassinations, into today... but also: in the quiet of the forests and near the ocean, reflecting on love and spirituality, humanity and relationship, citizenship and responsibility, and on the strife and bonds of family.

The BOOKS:

Please click on each image at the left to review, select, sample, order:

A snapshot of 1800’s America that reads like an adventure story: Alexander Longfellow Senior’s life of exploration as coast surveyor, charting northern Maine borders among Indians and trappers, sailing around Cape Horn, surveying the South ravaged by Civil war, and mingling with John Quincy Adams, Dolley Madison, President Polk in the drawing-rooms of Washington D.C. Many amusing letters reveal rare glimpses of courtship and family life in Maine’s country manor-houses. An engrossing story from a man hitherto eclipsed by his famous poet brother and ignored by historians. A landmark book, a coffee-table journey and a visual treat: gorgeous maps, drawings, photographs.

"It's the eve of Word War II. Hitler is on the march, swallowing entire countries, extinguishing the lights of Europe. Three thousand miles away another war is brewing for the soul of a Boston family with tyrants of its own. Thus sets the stage for Be Still, My Soul, Richard Shain Cohen's novel based, in part, on real-life war letters sent by his brothers and an uncle from Europe and British Palestine....There's no room for gray in a world fighting between good and evil, and Cohen is masterful at conjuring the mood of America circa in the first half of the 1940s. Close your eyes and you'll hear the Andrews Sisters. You 'll feel the cohesion of war-time Christmas in New York-soldiers in uniforms, women with shoulder pads scurrying in the cold past department store windows on their way to give blood for the boys overseas. The fast-paced narrative is alternately heart-racing and heartbreaking; struggling for survival in the desert against Rommel, persevering on a home front missing sons and fathers who will never come home..."

In a form little used by novelists except for the most imaginative, here is a fascinating fusion of Celtic mythology with reality, reliving World War I to the start of World War II, a period that includes the Irish struggle for independence. The mythological warrior-goddess Medb mingles with other vivid characters from this critical period in world history to affirm the futility of war.... but in the telling, adolescents such as we were or knew mature suddenly as their hunger for love, independence, truth and fulfillment are tested sorely under the guns of war. As in all well-wrought epics, minute conflicts mirror global ones and relationships reveal mankind's shifting commitments to ethics and morality.