Thirty-Seven Tales of Transition from
the Industrial to Technology Age.
CLICK HERE TO READ SAMPLE TALES
AUDIO SAMPLES:
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"Pickett's marvelous collection of tales are sometimes hilarious, sometimes somber. The tales are always genuine and beautifully written as this talented scribe records his adventures straddling two very different chapters of the American experience."
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Dr. David Wood
Author, reviewer, former VP, National Book Critics Circle
& Books Editor at Minneapolis StarTribune
About
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As a kid, I went to 11 schools; 12, if you count Romper Room with Miss Betty. My six siblings and I lived in suburbia and small to mid-sized towns. We grew up in natural pastures and concrete cities in an age powered by oil and coal, iron and steel.
Somewhere in the middle of the 20th century, the powers began to shift toward a New Age. Tubes, transistors, and microchips kicked off a virtual migration to the most progressive era in the history of humanity... so far.
These ‘Tales of Transition’ are the recollections of a Midwestern kid who rubbed up against a wide variety of challenges and blessings during the cyber-makeover. In them, I attempt to blend historical context and perspective with some humor, philosophy, and common tragedy.
The tales share the experiences of a large, close-knit family, and how we endured challenges such as a house fire, the pre-mature death of a parent, and financial ruin.
They also include brushes with celebrity and notoriety such as meeting Neil Armstrong in our front yard a few weeks after he walked on the moon, a personal 30-year feud with Cal Ripken, and three hours of vodka-lemonades with Arnold Palmer. Alex Trebek toasted our marriage, and there was the day my wife stole personal property of the Clintons' from the White House. Her cousin, Tom Burnett, was on Flight 93.
My arrogant hope is to connect the daily grind of everyday life to unique experience and hopeful purpose – to remind people that we always possess the power to triumph over adversity.​ I want the reader to feel nostalgia and empathy, and to close this book with a sense that it’s never too late to seek – and find – new joys.
These are ‘Tales’ because recollection isn’t always as accurate as one thinks. My inspirations come from fond and formidable memories, and from writers and thinkers ranging from Dr. Seuss to Dorothy Parker, Mark Twain to Virginia Woolf, Frederick Douglass, Marcus Aurelius, Gandhi, and Ogden Nash. It’s a quasi-autobiography that’s out of order.
We humans live with the arrogance of infinity in our hearts, behaving as if our places and things, processes, ideas, and conditions, were created by – and forever belong to us.
We plow through life collecting ripple-causing memories and egotistical frustrations over all that is finite – as if we are not.
In the end, when our mortality is finally measured, it is with the elements of infinity: Love, Grace, and Forgiveness.
This is the Arrogance of Infinity – a collection of real-life Tales about the transition from the Industrial to Technology Age.
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Mike Pickett
What People are Saying
Pickett's marvelous collection of Tales are sometimes hilarious, sometimes somber. The Tales are always genuine and beautifully written as this talented scribe records his adventures straddling two very different chapters of the American Experience.
Dr. David Wood
Author, Reviewer, Former Vice President of the National Book Critics Circle, and Books Editor, Mpls Star & Tribune
Book Signings/Readings
If you know of a Senior Center, a Library, a Winery or a Cafe interested in a reading, please contact me.
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We packed Mancini's and sold out of books at the launch. Thank you, everyone!