Books published by Regent Press

Revolutionary Hillbilly is a history book, an organizer''s notebook, and an autobiography. These are stories of unity against poverty and racism. Hy Thurman is a hillbilly and a revolutionary organizer. As a co-founder of the Young Patriots Organization, Thurman helped organize poor white communities in alliance with the Illinois Black Panther Party and Young Lords Organization during the Sixties. He is an educator who got his schooling in the fields of Tennessee, his PhD on the streets of Chicago, and his hunger for justice in the back of a patrol car.  Revolutionary Hillbilly is unique because it is a first person chronicle of the unfolding of landmark events of the 1960''s. Hy Thurman''s book provides an insiders view of how coalitions can form and the group dynamics that can keep these movements vibrant. It is an invaluable resource for historians and activists alike.

ABOUT THE BOOK"An electronic extension of the count┬¡less traveling salesmen and medicine men who crisscrossed America during its expansion, the ''faceless'' deejay ... the pop propagandist who is the Amer┬¡ican Dream - or a nightmare of a Knight Mercantile."The Deejays is the first fut story of the tribal chieftains who manipulate-pos┬¡sibly create -popula taste with every spin of their timetable. It is also the history of the countrywide radio stations and the re┬¡cording companies and their role in the extravaganza. The immense growth of radio in the United States since the Depression can be traced directly through the evolution of the deeiay who played records, interspersed with announcements of time, weather, and news, and most importantly peddled merchandise. In the beginning, they often spieled for dubious patent medicines or cut-rate clothing and furniture stores. Later, as national advertisers saw the possibilities for big profits from a small in┬¡vestment in air time, they began buying into the recorded music programs on the air nearly twenty-four hours a day from radio stations across country. At first, stations were reluctant to shell out cash just to play records. Recording firms, band leaders, and top singers feared an adverse effect on sales. The opposite happened, with every promoter eventually battling to get his discs released first on top shows, paving the way for huge incomes for major deejays, and the payola scandals that rocked the country late in 1959 when adoring fans saw many of their idols toppled in disgrace. The individual stories of the deejays are fascinating. Many of the diskers are quoted directly, talking frankly and irreverently about their jobs and bosses, tunes and trends, frustrations and triumph. Just how powerful they were, especially in their influence on younger listeners, is a question Arnold Passman explores in depth. Look┬¡ing to the future, he concludes that the day of the mass audience is over and that, increasingly, broadcasters will follow the read of such listener-supportecl stations as KPFK, Los Angeles; KPFA, Berkeley; and WBAI, New York, in appealing to a selective audience through true community service programming. 

A blood-curdling howl for women to awaken, Janine Canan’s poignant and disturbing compendium on the condition of 21st century woman portrays the women we love, hate, pity and are — exposing our tortured relationship to the feminine in an increasingly maled and motherless wasteland of pathological masculinity. Both lamentation and hymn, You Guys is ultimately a tribute to the indomitable potential of Women and  the eternal beauty  of Life.

The author/artist writes: The first drawing published in this book was January 13, 2020. Life was filled with adventure. I draw nearly every day. I organize my drawings by calendar date and file in thick folders that I make. When the folder is full with about forty drawings, I start another. These drawings from January 13 until March 16, 2020 are an accurate log created with pen, paint, papers, and musings of my life in San Francisco and the greater Bay Area.

A book of recollections about the 2016 Burning Man Arts Festival consisting of poems, stories and conversations with real and imaginary beings. It's about getting there, being there and leaving there - and about a certain fox that appeared in the nearby hills while the author hiked.

Meditations on Love and Catastrophe at The Liars' Cafe is a formally innovative novel that began as a series of linked prose poems generated through automatic writing and turned into the story of a romance between two young intellectuals in the opening years of the new millennium. It is part dream vision, part prose poem, part series of dialogues about love, nature, politics, the nature of good and evil, and the purpose of human life, and part the story of the two young lovers as they struggle to understand themselves, each other, and the chaotic world of the early twenty-first century.