NEWS RELEASE

Uncommon Common Sense by J. Glenn Evans
SCW Publications
ISBN 978-1-877882-55-5
Chapbook, 25 pages, $7.00

SCW Publications announces the release of a short, but powerful chapbook by the poet-novelist and political activist, J. Glenn Evans. It is a little more than half the size of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, a topical subject lost to the world a generation or so ago.

Uncommon Common Sense is a book of short essays covering subjects as Life, Kids, Society, Money Matters, Politics and Power, Death, Human Rights, Friends, and What Bugs Us. Only 25 pages long but as one author of six published novels, Barclay Franklin says, "Accumulated wisdom in this chapbook is priceless." A few samples:

• Words are the bullets with which we conquer life.
• Most of the good accomplished in this world is never considered feasible when first proposed.
• In a world where friends are a must the world admires most that one who can stand alone.
• Divine right of property in no more valid than the divine right of kings.
• Men and women of small accord make great fuss about what they wear and what they "own" while those of true note take little heed of this, but are more concerned about how their lives are clad.

Evans is an award winning poet, author of one book of poetry and three chapbooks of poetry, several local community histories, three novels and many political essays. Part Cherokee, he spent his early life on a small farm in Oklahoma during the dust bowl days and helped work his way through college working in an Oregon sawmill during the summers. He spent 20 years as a stockbroker and investment banker, operated an exploration mining company and financed and co-produced a move starring Slim Pickens and Mark Miller. Once a conservative Republican, his wakeup call to become a political activist was during Reagan’s administration that supported South American dictators with death squads.

COMMENTS by Others on the Back of the Book

Leave it to J. Glenn Evans to glean all the gems from the many fields he farmed in life and put them in this one small package. Accumulated wisdom in this chapbook is priceless. ....
        Barclay Franklin, author of A Race for Glory Run; The Bride Price; The Chording of T. O. Malone; Up the Hill, Through the Long Grass; and The Shepherd's Moon.

It’s the kind of knowledge I’ve run into in small books of Zen teachings and other in the past twenty years. An idea or two at a time that leave footprints through the blizzard of life some of us live.
        Ray Foreman, editor and publisher of Clark Street Review and Backstreet Poets Quarterly.

In Uncommon Common Sense you recognize a style that is a cross between the trenchant satiric voice of Mark Twain and the political conviction of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense. But Evans is not a mere "knockoff." He has a brand of political and social commentary all his own. "A society that throws its kids away does so at its peril" and "Those with an eagle’s view of the world’s misery should show mercy when they swoop down on many wounded sparrows" is reminiscent of Matthew 10;29-31.
        Michael Magee, poet, critic, playwright

A short phrase to capture it all, "raise some hell for good or be herded like sheep...." That is the choice everyone has. Pithy aphorisms are part Paine (Thomas), part Clemens (Samuel), and part Jefferson. Allusions and metaphors involving the natural world ("steeds" for example) are particularly fine, quite classical.
        Arthur Travis Abbott, MD

ADDITIONAL COMMENTS BY OTHERS

Uncommon Common Sense exhibits striking creativity, rare foresight, and keen market sense. You run with the gait of a stripling, write with the wisdom of a Zeus. Keep whacking 'em
        Vance H. Trimble, Pulitzer prize-winning journalist, editor, author—Wewoka, Oklahoma

You can learn more about living and life from this small book than most people learn in a lifetime of TV, newspapers, and listening to prophets
        Ray Foreman, editor and publisher of Clark Street Review and Backstreet Poets Quarterly.

Found many passages great for quoting, What comes across in UCS is a powerful generosity, and a courage implicit in the optimism inherent in not giving up to the massive forces in the world for evil and avarice and domination
        Donald K. Gutierrez, professor emeritus of English at Western New Mexico University