Showing results by author "James Johnson" in All Categories

He was crowned in gold and buried under a toilet. And in between, the world called him God. Haile Selassie ruled Ethiopia for over four decades — a modernizing monarch who stood toe-to-toe with Mussolini, walked out of exile like a prophet, and became the spiritual messiah of an entire global movement. To some, he was Africa’s last true emperor. To others, he was Jah Himself. From the smoke-filled hills of Jamaica to the lyrics of Bob Marley, The Lion of Judah lived on — not just as a man, but as a myth. This is the story of power, prophecy, betrayal, and rebirth. Crowned by men.

Barack Obama didn’t break the system. He mastered it. This is not a tribute. And it’s not a takedown. It’s a clear-eyed walk through one of the most disciplined presidencies in American history. From a kid with no defined center to a commander-in-chief who made calm look presidential and control look easy. He didn’t storm in with fire. He played the long game. He passed healthcare reform when everyone said it couldn’t be done. He ordered drone strikes with surgical silence. He addressed racism while trying not to set the country on fire.

What do you get when you mix sun gods, death gods, dragon-slaying storm brothers, and a mirror that brought back the light? You get the Kojiki—the oldest book in Japan, the sacred origin story of a nation, and the mythic scroll that crowned emperors for over a thousand years.

He had no degree, no license, no product. Yet Jeffrey Epstein ended up with a $77 million mansion, a private island, and a guest list that reads like the boardroom of the world. The Financier isn’t a biography — it’s an autopsy. This is the story of a man who didn’t just game the system… He revealed it. From classrooms he shouldn’t have taught in to courtrooms that let him walk, this book follows the network that built him, protected him, and quietly erased the evidence when things got too loud. This isn’t about one predator.

Here is a bracing deconstruction of the framework for understanding the world that is learned as gospel in Economics 101, regardless of its imaginary assumptions and misleading half-truths. Economism: an ideology that distorts the valid principles and tools of introductory college economics...

The FBI: How a Filing Cabinet Took Over America is a surgical walk through the most powerful domestic surveillance machine in U.S. history — and the terrifying banality behind it. From its paranoid birth to its modern algorithmic glow-up, this book traces how the FBI evolved from a desk job into an empire. This isn’t a thriller. This isn’t a rant. It’s the story of how America’s most trusted agency spent a hundred years collecting secrets, destroying lives, and filing it all away. J. Edgar Hoover. COINTELPRO. MLK. Waco. 9/11. Metadata. Informants. Blackmail. Bureaucracy as weapon.

What if the Bible was only half the story? In 1945, a sealed jar was unearthed in the Egyptian desert. Inside: a set of ancient texts that no one was supposed to read. Known now as the Nag Hammadi Library, these 1,600-year-old writings include lost gospels, secret revelations, and alternative takes on Jesus, God, creation, and reality itself. This book walks you straight into the fire. Not with dogma — but with myth, metaphor, and the actual words the early Church buried. You’ll meet the Demiurge, a false god who thinks he’s the real one. You’ll hear Jesus speak in riddles.

What is color? Not just pigment. Not just light. Not even just perception. Color is a system. A language written in wavelengths, built by biology, shaped by culture, and weaponized by power. From ancient dyes to modern marketing, from the psychology of red to the physics of violet, COLOR is a vibrant walk through everything we think we see… and everything we’ve been trained to feel. Explore how the brain edits the spectrum, how flags and uniforms manipulate emotion, how art history is lined with poison, and why no one saw “blue” until they invented a word for it. This is not a book about art.

Edison isn’t just a biography. It’s a blueprint. A story of how modern innovation was wired, sold, and mythologized. And why we’re still living in its current.

The world isn’t going to burn. It already is. The World Is on Fire is a devastating, clear-eyed walkthrough of the climate crisis as it actually exists. Not as a theory, not as a threat, but as a daily reality. JJ doesn’t waste time with doomer panic or soft-focus optimism. Instead, he tells the story straight: how we lit the fuse with coal and oil, how the corporations lied, how the system got stuck, and how the poorest people on Earth are already paying the price.

The Hidden Hand: A History of Secret Societies pulls back the curtain on the groups that shaped civilization—not with conspiracy, but with structure, symbolism, and silence. From ancient mystery rites and medieval brotherhoods to Ivy League crypts and Silicon Valley cults, JJ traces the real influence of secret societies across time—without the tinfoil, the paranoia, or the guesswork. This is not a book about who runs the world. It’s a book about how power cloaks itself—through ritual, myth, and the illusion of secrecy.

Before gods had names, temples had altars, and books were called holy, we were staring into the storm and searching for meaning. From prehistoric burials and animistic spirits to sacred texts, televangelists, cults, algorithms, and Instagram astrology, Religion 101 traces the full arc of human faith in all its glory and violence. In this punchy history, JJ breaks down the world’s oldest force: not by preaching, but by exploring. You’ll meet prophets, kings, gods, heretics, influencers, and follow belief as it evolves into systems of power, identity, community, and content.

First published anonymously in 1912, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man became one of James Weldon Johnson’s most famous works, and remains a testament to the lives and experiences of both Johnson and his peers. Although primarily a work of fiction, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man offers many parallels with the life of Johnson himself. Set shortly after the Civil War, this powerful fictional memoir recounts the life of a biracial man, grappling with questions around identity, race and justice.

He died broke, bleeding, and unknown. Now he’s priceless. Van Gogh: A Life in Color, Pain, and Immortality isn’t your typical artist biography. It’s a raw, unfiltered journey into the soul of a man we turned into a myth — and what we lost when we did. This book peels away the poster boy tragedy, the swirling clichés, and the pop-culture memes to reveal the real Vincent: a failed preacher, a frantic letter-writer, a man who lived on bread crusts and absinthe — and painted like the stars were screaming.

Originally published anonymously in 1912, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man revealed as never before the color line dividing America, and the price it exacted on those souls who could traverse the two worlds. The book presents the fictional account of "an ex-colored man" - an African-American who could pass for white - as he attempts to choose which side of the line will better suit his life, and his psyche.

NIXON is a raw, clear-eyed biography of the most paranoid, brilliant, calculating, and self-destructive president in American history. Richard Nixon didn’t fall from grace. He built the fall himself. Room by room, tape by tape, play by play. He came from nothing, rose through Cold War paranoia, clawed his way into the White House, and rewired the entire presidency in his own image. He opened China. He froze the Soviets. He ended the gold standard. And then he recorded everything, including his own collapse. This book isn’t a caricature. It’s not a defense. It’s not Watergate on repeat.

Success is one of those words that has different meanings. More often than not, however we define it, it is misunderstood. If you see a finely dressed person driving an expensive automobile, without knowing anything else about that person, you can’t help but automatically think, “Boy! That’s a successful person!” It could very well be that he is facing bankruptcy. Or her health is failing. Or his personal life is in shambles. Likewise, were you to see a somewhat disheveled person driving a late model automobile, you don’t give them a second thought. At the least, you don’t even ...

The explosive final novel in the Endgame trilogy. Two keys have been found. The strongest Players are left. One final key remains to win Endgame and save the world. For Sarah, Jago, Aisling, Maccabee, Shari, An, and Hilal, Endgame has reached its final phase. The third key, Sun Key, is all that...

She wore black for forty years. And ruled a world in mourning. Queen Victoria didn’t just wear the crown — she became it. Through grief, silence, and sheer symbolic power, she turned herself into the emotional architecture of an empire that never stopped expanding. While others fought, conquered, and colonized, she sat — cloaked in black — and let the myth do the work. Victoria: The Widow Who Ruled the World is not a sentimental biography.

This is the story of the NSA — the agency you weren’t supposed to know existed, quietly building the largest surveillance machine in human history, run by math nerds, funded by fear, and powered by your private life. From Cold War cables to smart phone wiretaps, secret courts to predictive policing, The NSA: The World’s Most Powerful Perverts is a sharp, sarcastic, and disturbingly true deep dive into how one agency went from “born bugged” to watching everyone, all the time, forever.