Mediation On-Line, A Newsletter from ADR
"This book is a must read for most people. It also makes a great gift book."

Book Description
PEACETALK 101 is the story of an ordinary man with a hard row to hoe, who is so disgusted with the state of the world, so depressed at what he sees as a universal absence of hope for humankind, that he sees no way out except the most desperate of measures. But then things that are not at all ordinary start happening to him, as a stranger -- a stranger who seems to be nothing more than a homeless man lazily riding the bus all day -- shows him, one small mysterious step at a time, that he has another choice. This brief novel in the form of an extended parable, leads the reader on an amazing journey from despair to joy.

From the Author
This book is about desperation, and about replacing desperation with hope. Strange as it may seem, it isn't usually great catastrophes that drive people to desperation. Most people, faced with a personal disaster, seem to rise to the occasion; they're able to find a kind of inner strength that makes it possible for them to deal with a tragic event. What wears people down and makes them desperate is the constant drip-drip-drip of a thousand little daily hassles happening over and over and over again with seemingly no hope that they will ever stop. Peacetalk 101 is about an ordinary person who has reached that point and is feeling that kind of desperation, and I wanted to show that the majority of his problems were not problems caused by entities "out there" in the world, like the government or the stock market or the company he works for or other people's meanness; instead, they were problems of language. Henry has stopped having any kind of meaningful human communication. He has come to believe that no matter how a conversation starts, no matter what it's about,  it will always end in harsh and hostile language. He feels so battered by that sort of language that he would rather have no communication at all than risk any more of the words and body language that are so infuriating and hurtful. He feels that he's in a trap and that he has no choices except desperate choices -- but he's wrong. Joe's role in the book is to explain that to him, to show him that the trap is an illusion, and to show him how to use language -- something about which every human being is an expert -- to find his way back to a life that is worth living. Many years ago I wrote a self-help book called The Gentle Art of Verbal Self-Defense that has sold well over one million copies and still sells briskly. I know it's a useful book because I get letters about it every week saying "Because I read your book, I didn't hit my kid" (or "didn't quit my job" or  "didn't get a divorce" or "didn't kill myself"). I wrote Peacetalk 101 so that there would also be a book offering some of the basic information about verbal self-defense in the form of a story. Peacetalk 101 is ideal for a reading group. The chapters are short enough to make it possible for even the busiest person to read one of them before each group meeting -- they're short enough that a group could easily read one aloud at each meeting instead of reading them in advance.And I would always welcome your questions or comments about the book; there's a direct e-mail link to me at the homepage.

About the Author
Suzette Haden Elgin was born in 1936; she lives in the Ozarks, where she runs a virtual business from her home. She has been a secretary, a translator, a novelist, a university professor (of linguistics), a public speaker, a folksinger and songwriter and poet, an artist, a wife and mother and and widow and grandmother. In all her work, she has focused on just two closely-linked goals: getting information about language and linguistics out to the general public, and doing something to diminish the level of violence in this world. She is the author of the Gentle Art of Verbal Self-Defense series, The Grandmother Principles, and The Language Imperative, all nonfiction; her science fiction novels include the Ozark trilogy, the Native Tongue trilogy, the Coyote Jones series, and now Peacetalk 101.

SYNOPSIS

Once there was a man named Henry, and he had a hard row to hoe. He wasn't happy, nothing about his life was the way he had thought it would be, and nothing he tried to do had ever gone as well as he meant it to go."

So begins Peacetalk 101, the story of an ordinary man, who is so disgusted with the state of the world, so depressed at what he sees as a universal absence of hope for humankind and peace, that he sees no way out except the most desperate of measures.