The Monkey Bible author's quest to save great apes

Mark Laxer explains what motivated him to spend 10 years researching and writing The Monkey Bible.
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Mark Laxer’s second book
The Monkey Bible is the fictional story of Emmanuel, a young college bound Christian man who suddenly has reason to suspect that his genetic make-up, and indeed the story of his creation, is not what he had thought it had been. Dismayed and seemingly alienated from his Church, Emmanuel journeys around the world in search of his genetic and spiritual origins, identity, and community. The science behind The Monkey Bible is accurate, up-to-date, and accessible, and the reader comes to understand the biological creation story as the adventure unfolds. While The Monkey Bible can be seen as the latest chapter in the larger-than-life debate between Darwinists and creationists, the novel is respectful of both sides, and strives to provide a gentle supportive bridge across which people who disagree can communicate. Ultimately, The Monkey Bible is a timely and necessary plea to alter the stories by which we define ourselves as a way to protect the countless creatures on the great tree of life, upon which all human life depends. The Monkey Bible is a compelling read and the potential audience extends well beyond those interested in biology, anthropology, wildlife conservation, mythology, and religion. Adults will enjoy this book and so will college students, whose fresh questions about their own origins will resonate with this novel. http://www.monkeybible.com/

Using The Monkey Bible as inspiration, songwriter Eric Maring has written a companion music CD which uses the varied notion of lines to echo the novel's themes. The Line--at turns serious, light, joyous, exuberant, and brooding--praises our ability and need to explore our world and to ask questions, especially regarding our relationship to our planet, our religions, and ourselves.

[The Monkey Bible]: “…brings Aldous Huxley into the genetic age.”
--Richard Wrangham, Harvard University

[Eric Maring’s The Line]: “The Line produces Graceland like heights of eclecticism and inventiveness, and mirrors the book’s own already lyrical approach to philosophy.”
--Alexander von Bismarck, Executive Director, Environmental Investigative Agency

Eric Maring’s website: https://www.maringmusic.com/

Mark Laxer’s first book
A lyrical account of a young man’s mystical quest, Take Me For A Ride: Coming of Age in a Destructive Cult takes the reader in and out of the grip of a brilliant, sensitive, seemingly benign cult leader gone mad. Take Me For A Ride is the story of Mark, who, at the age of seventeen, longs to see for himself what lies beneath the “surface" world of reason. Mark’s spiritual path takes an unexpected turn when his meditation teacher, Frederick Lenz, learns to use fear, sleep deprivation, and LSD as tools of persuasion. Lenz, dubbed by Newsweek as the Yuppie Guru, holds a Ph.D. in English. He calls himself Rama. He claims to be the last incarnation of a destructive Hindu deity. He extracts from devotees roughly ten million dollars a year. After leaving Rama’s inner circle, Mark faces head winds and haunting memories as he bicycles across America. More than a vehicle for exercising and exorcising subtle ghosts of the past, the bike trip serves as the frame through which this combined adventure story, self-help book, and expose is narrated. In the early 90’s, Mark was sued $30 million as part of an effort to intimidate and silence him. He responded, in 1995, by sharing the entirety of Take Me For A Ride on the internet, as part of Project Gutenberg, for free. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/162 The work is also available from Amazon as a paperback. https://www.amazon.com/s?k=take +me+for+a+ride+mark+laxer

“While his portrait of a charismatic leader’s slide into madness is gripping, perhaps more important here is Laxer’s disclosure of some of the motives impelling young people to immerse themselves in cults…the work is well written.” --Library Journal

Mark Laxer’s third book
Rama Trauma Trump: I Left the Cult and Now Look What Happened is the true story of a young man who falls prey to, then breaks away from, an increasingly authoritative and abusive charismatic leader. The narrative in this highly accessible graphic novel explores the importance of cult-proofing kids, communities, and nations. http://www.ramatraumatrump.com/