KOVACS, Joshua

ISBN 978-1-923088-93-1
PAPERBACK (INGRAM)

ISBN 978-1-923156-12-8
PAPERBACK (AMAZON)

Essentially You

“The most important conversations you need to have are with yourself.”

For your benefit, I’m sharing the physical activities and thought processes I focused on that I accredit my success to through the most challenging time of my life, suffering from poor mental health and low self-esteem.

Once I got myself up and started exercising, it allowed me to start thinking and self-reflect honestly about different situations, choices and interactions from my teen years and throughout my life.

I realised the choices I had made years before only provided limited options. I needed to understand better how I could continually improve my life’s path and create better opportunities going forward.

Over time and with my continual efforts, my mental health improved with my outlook on life being from a more positive perspective, creating greater self-belief and confidence to overcome my challenges.

The lessons learnt via my experiences can provide guidance and support, reducing confusion in your own journey. My dream is to help you continually improve your normal and then be the better you. Read on and believe in yourself.

MORRIS, Don

ISBN 978-1-923589-52-0
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Role Models, Mentors. Leaders, and Elders

 

Our Potential to Be the Difference that Makes a Difference

To quote Hal David’s iconic 1965 song…

“What the world needs now is love, sweet love It’s the only thing that there’s just too little of What the world needs now is love, sweet love Not just for some but for everyone”.

This book suggests that Role Models, Mentors, Leaders and Elders can nurture and build love for one and all. Over time … more and more of ‘us’ … in these roles … can help build loving values in families, relationships, communities, and ecologies … locally and globally.

Through ever-increasing role-modelling, mentoring, leading and eldership, many persons and peoples of the Earth can nurture and proliferate love in the form of dignity, respect, kindness, fairness, generosity, integrity, and accountability.

You and I and ‘a host of us’ can nurture loving-valuesin- action to benefit all people, all our fellow species, and all of Nature. Millions of ‘us’ have the combined potential to fulfil these noble and necessary roles to help serve and heal our World and our Earth.

Over decades, a minority of exemplars can become many. Exemplars of love can become the new norm, the new normal way to be human. We can do this. We must do this.

This book is original and thought-provoking.

It is a quick and easy read.

ISBN 978-1-923443-85-3
PAPERBACK

ISBN 978-1-923523-43-2
EBOOK

Dickheads, Wankers, and Arseholes

 

A bold and cheeky guide to decoding three male types and syndromes

If you haven’t read a book about Dickheads, Wankers, Arseholes? Here it is.

If you haven’t read about the syndromes of dickheadery, wankery and arseholery? Now you can.

It’s about time someone wrote about these bleedingly obvious personality ‘types’ … and about three enmeshed, problematic, and far-reaching cultural syndromes.

This book is plain-speaking, perceptive, penetrating, cheeky, and original. It is widely relevant, practical, and replete with insightful analysis. It is written in a distinctly Aussie voice.

And … it is written by a ‘man’ … with decades of experience through a blend of Policing, Community Corrections, Social Work, teaching at university, Consultancy, and training Police at all levels in a range of subject areas.

For some readers … there may be some seismic shocks. Look out … men.

Get ready to nod and sigh and refl ect on the painfully obvious that you may have intuited and-or observed … but had not crystalized into detailed understanding.

Grab this book … and get reading!

ISBN 978-1-922957-98-6
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Can We Do Better?

All Don’s books are about hope for us humans to do better than a mishmash of historical and current issues and harms that arise from misguided, dysfunctional and destructive expressions of masculinity. As clarified in all the poems — misguided, dysfunctional, harmful masculinity is not by all men, or even by most men, but is too-often manifested here, there and everywhere by too many men, in too many realms, over too long a time.

The poems weave a detailed network of patriarchal issues in culture, religion, politics, institutions, communities, families, and relationships. They highlight the impact of manmade harms to the earth, First Peoples, women, children, and other often-disempowered societal groupings.

Some men might struggle with this unusual and confronting anthology. In contrast, it is likely that a good proportion of women will sigh and nod as they work their way through the poems and the themes.

The poems advocate that societal evolution is contingent upon a critical mass of us facing key facts, truths and realities about wayward masculinity. The anthology concludes with a range of powerful and hopeful invitations that may help us humans do better than our history of man-made harms to ourselves, our kindred species, and the earth … our Mother.

ISBN 978-1-923156-08-1​
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Are We Better Than?

ARE WE BETTER THAN? is the fourth in series of books that tackle pervasive and perplexing human issues. It is the scaled-down, abridged little-sister version of Can We Do Better? … which is the first and by the far the largest of the series. Comprising about half the number of pages of Can We do Better? … Are We Better Than? is less daunting and more manageable. This will appeal to people who prefer a smaller, easier, more compact read.

All Don’s books are about hope for us humans to do better than a mishmash of historical and current issues and harms that arise from misguided, dysfunctional and destructive expressions of masculinity.  As clarified throughout the book, misguided, dysfunctional, harmful masculinity is not by all men, or even by most men, but is too-often manifested here, there and everywhere … by too many men, in too many realms, over too long a time.

Are We Better Than? weaves a detailed network of patriarchal issues in culture, religion, politics, institutions, communities, families, and relationships. It highlights the impact of man-made harms to the Earth, First Peoples, Women, Children, and other often-disempowered societal groupings. Some men might struggle with these unusual and confronting themes. In contrast, it is likely that a good proportion of women will sigh and nod as they read.

Are We Better Than? concludes with a range of powerful and hopeful invitations that may help us humans do better than our history of man-made harms to ourselves, our kindred species, and the earth … our Mother.

About the Author

Don Morris is a family man and a retired veteran social worker. His professional background integrates counselling, program management, organisational improvement, cultural change, leadership development, teaching at university, and running his consultancy business.

Don is people-focused, a big-picture thinker, and a change agent. He is dedicated to promoting social justice and critical analysis of human issues. Don is perceptive, an original thinker, and solution-focused. He tackles issues with clarity, focus and determination.

In this anthology, Don is a ‘conscious dreamer’ and a mindful visionary. He is lucid about respective and combined influences of religion, populism, political machinations, pop-psychology, junk-science, conspiracy madness, internet misinformation, and social media inanity. In the face of these, Don is committed to educational processes that give voice to facts, truths and realities. He is also committed to possibilities for us to do better than so much unhelpful stuff that dumbs us down and holds us back.

In all his books, Don drills down into ‘inconvenient truths’ and synthesizes diverse macro and micro issues. He proposes ways for us to build a conscious blend of awareness, dignifying values, rationality, integrity, and accountability. Don reminds us that these interrelated priorities apply to individuals, relationships, institutions, communities, cultures, and governance. They are also crucial to our care and custodianship of human and environmental ecologies.

Don is person of mind, heart and hand. He is thinker, a lover, and a doer. His books encourage readers to think intelligently, rationally and strategically … to feel sentiently, passionately and earnestly … and to act purposefully, constructively and hopefully.

GLEESON, David

ISBN 978-1-922957-31-3
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The Bucket’s Full

A life story of traumatic experiences and overcoming consequences.

The bucket’s full is a true story of a Police Officer who has worked for 37 years in a number of Policing jurisdictions and capacity
development missions in Timor Leste, Afghanistan and Papua New Guinea.

The author, David J Gleeson, was a high ranked station manager and detective in Victoria before joining the Australian Federal Police to work overseas. Following a series of incidents whilst deployed in Papua New Guinea in 2014, Federal Agent David J Gleeson is diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. His bucket was filled.

During treatment, Gleeson recounted his various adventures and episodes that led to his diagnosis of PTSD, which resulted in the compilation of his story.

The Bucket’s Full covers a wide variety of the events and traumatic circumstances that lead to an eventual serious mental health injury that almost resulted in his death.

This book is a worth reading collection of a man’s insightful experiences who learnt to live again.

BAUTISTA, Shane

ISBN 978-0-6485862-6-5
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Resilience: A Story of Survival

Resilience a story of survival is a compelling memoir. Shane’s message of hope, recovery, and resilience.

With the odds stacked against kids that come from being ‘State Wards’ – drugs, becoming a teenage parent, living a life of crime, prison and even death; Shane got out and worked towards obtaining a higher education that leads to a career as a Mental Health Nurse.

Shane is his own success story.

About the Author

Shane Bautista is a gay male who lives in Melbourne, Australia. He currently works as a Registered Nurse and has a passion in helping others. As a child, Shane was made a ward of the state and placed in foster care at the age of seven years old. Shane suffers from mental health issues with depression and anxiety. Sharing his story of survival growing up in care and becoming a success story by defeating the odds and having the resilience to have overcome many diversities in his life. Shane is a first time author. Completing his debut non-fiction novel, has been Shane’s biggest achievement yet. Shane’s memoir ‘Resilience: a story of survival’ is raw, confronting and inspirational. 

COFFEY, Sarah

ISBN 978-1-922803-93-1
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Sweet Grass

The girl in the dream

Sarah Coffey was brought into the world in 1961, and was assigned male at birth.

As a young child, she experienced feelings of being different – in her soul and her mind she was female.

It was only after navigating adolescence, early adulthood and the birth of her children that Sarah finally decided to listen to the feelings within her to become her true self.

Follow Sarah on her journey of discovery and self-love. At times raw and emotional, Sarah sheds light on a topic which can be confronting.

An authentic and powerful story, Sweet Grass: The girl in the dream will allow insight not only into Sarah’s own experiences but hopes to spread awareness around gender transitioning.

TANNER, Lindsay

ISBN 978-1-9227223-9-3
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The Warriors

KNOCKABOUT MELBOURNE TAXI DRIVER JACK VAN DUYN HAS HIT ROCK BOTTOM. HIS TAXI BUSINESS HAS GONE BUST, HE’S BEEN EVICTED AGAIN, AND HIS FRIENDS HAVE EMIGRATED.

The mundane process of applying for the dole and finding a place to live unexpectedly propel Jack onto the front line of the gender wars. He is forced to go back to uni and enrol in Gender Studies, and finds himself enlisted to infiltrate the Warriors, a secretive men’s group dedicated to harassing women who’ve separated from their violent partners. Their prime target is his new co-tenant Anita, a sex-worker who Jack commits to protecting – because he is falling in love with her.

As the odd assortment of eccentrics and chancers in the decaying Carlton mansion he’s moved into descend into chaotic conflict, Jack’s mission turns deadly when the Warriors unleash vicious revenge attacks on women.

The Warriors explores the appalling realities of male violence against women, the twisted mentalities that impel otherwise ordinary men to extremes of brutality and murder, and the challenges facing decent men caught in a bewildering maze of rapidly changing gender roles and expectations.