AMERICAN BUFFALO author, Steven Rinella shares a few of his favorite books.

I Served the King of England by Bohumil Hrabal. My wife and I were talking about influential books of our college years and I mentioned Milan Kundera's Unbearable Lightness of Being. She rolled her eyes a little and started urging me to read here favorite Czech writer, Hrabal. I quickly hammered through a couple of his novels and was blown away by this one. It's just so funny and alive.

Tough Trip Through Paradise by Andrew Garcia. This is an account of a kid who gets a loan to buy equipment and supplies in Bozeman, Montana, and then takes it into the Musselshell Valley to trade with the Indians for furs. This during 1878 and 1879. Some historians accuse of Garcia of playing hard and fast with the truth, which is probably true, but his account provides an astonishing look at the culture and sex lives of Indian tribes that were edging toward the end of their free existence on the Great Plains.

Interior and Northern Alaska: A Natural History by Ronald L. Smith. Boring as hell title, yes, but this guy really knows his stuff. If you're at all interested in the finer, interconnected workings of the natural world, I suggest this book. And it doesn't just relate to Alaska. It's full of stuff that anyone who loves nature should know.

Red Rover by Deirdre McNamer. Full disclosure: Dee, as her friends call her, is a wonderful friend of mine. But I can't let that stop me from adding her fourth novel to this list. She is a beautiful writer, and her prose is dark, precise, and unsettling. If you need to be in a sunny, carefree mood over the next few days, better put this one off for now. But don't wait too long.

Son of the Morning Star by Evan S. Connell: Simply the greatest thing ever written about the American west. Period.

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Two of Spiegel & Grau's authors, James Levine and Somaly Mam, are spearheading separate campaigns against the human trafficking industry.

James Levine, who has been touring India and doing hands-on humanitarian work, has written The Blue Notebook, a powerful work of fiction about the life of a young prostitute in Mumbai. A haunting yet astonishingly hopeful novel about the power of storytelling, it shines a light on the devastating global issue of child prostitution. All of Levine's U.S. proceeds from the novel will be donated to the International Centre for Missing & Exploited Children and the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children.

Below is a recent Reuters article about Somaly Mam, a grassroots activist whose mission is rescuing and rehabilitating girls and young women sold into sexual slavery in Southeast Asia. Her courageous efforts to fight the sex-trafficking industry drew the attention of The Body Shop, who recently partnered with the Somaly Mam Foundation to raise awareness of the sex trade worldwide. Somaly's extraordinary memoir, The Road of Lost Innocence, is now out in paperback.

We are proud to publish authors dedicated to making a difference in the world.

For more information, please visit www.icmec.org and www.somaly.org.

Former sex slave seeks help as 4-year-old found in brothel
Mon Aug 3, 2009 12:54am EDT

By Belinda Goldsmith
CANBERRA (Reuters Life!) - A former sex slave on Monday launched a global campaign against trafficking, saying the age of girls forced into prostitution keeps getting younger.

Cambodian Somaly Mam, whose eponymous foundation is dedicated to fighting the $12 billion a year sex-trafficking industry, said a four-year-old girl was found last month at a brothel in Cambodia after being reported by a male client.

The youngster had been sold to the brothel by her mother, who is also a prostitute.
She is now being cared for at one of the seven shelters run by the Somaly Mam Foundation in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam set up to protect and rehabilitate girls rescued from sex slavery. The group also has an office in Thailand dealing with repatriation.

"You just have to hold her and stay with her and show her that you love her. Children can become children again," Mam told Reuters as she launched a joint venture with cosmetics retailer The Body Shop to raise awareness of sex trafficking.

"There is this belief that having sex with a virgin will cure you of HIV so there is an increasing market for younger and younger girls. In my time it was girls aged 15 or 16 but it has got younger and younger."

The United Nations estimates that two million women and children are trafficked every year, with 30 percent of these in Asia. Poor families sometimes sell a daughter to pay off debts.

To continue: http://www.reuters.com/article/lifestyleMolt/idUSTRE5720FH20090803?sp=true

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