Showing results by author "Blake Carter" in All Categories

Welcome to Utah, where wagon ruts meet billion-dollar malls, and sacred prophecy collides with PR campaigns. This is not the version you got in seminary. From red rock petroglyphs and Spanish explorers to polygamist raids, forged scriptures, and ski resorts, Zion in the Desert tells the strange, scrappy, and often uncomfortable history of a state that was never just one thing. The book dives headfirst into the contradictions that shaped Utah: faith and resistance, empire and exodus, miracles and cover-ups.

Mississippi is a state of contradictions. It is the birthplace of the blues and Elvis, yet also the epicenter of America’s ugliest battles over race and equality. It ranks last in nearly everything good, but first in cultural influence. Mud, Magnolias, and Mayhem: An Irreverent History of Mississippi takes you on a wild ride through the Magnolia State’s tangled past, from Civil War chaos and Jim Crow laws to tamale festivals, Elvis impersonators, and casino barges.

Welcome to Wisconsin, where beer is practically a food group and winter is a personality test. Cheese, Chill, and Chaos is a hilarious deep dive into the people, politics, and peculiarities that shaped the state. With a mix of sharp storytelling and biting humor, Jordan Blake Carter explores everything from indigenous roots and immigrant grit to bratwurst traditions and football obsessions. Whether you are a lifelong Cheesehead or just passing through, this book will make you laugh, groan, and maybe even crave a plate of squeaky curds.

In Clear Space, Clear Mind, you’ll be gently guided through a complete life reset, room by room, thought by thought. More than just another decluttering book, this uplifting guide helps you simplify your space and soothe your mind with compassion, clarity, and grace. Whether you’re drowning in stuff, stuck in overthinking, or craving more space to breathe, this book meets you where you are, with zero shame and plenty of encouragement.

If America is one big dysfunctional family, Idaho is the cousin you forget about until something bizarre drags it back into the spotlight. Potatoes? Sure. But also Ruby Ridge, Nazi compounds, hippies in hot springs, and a six-ton spud on wheels. This isn’t the glossy brochure. Irreverent Idaho tells the state’s story with sharp wit and a wink: Indigenous ingenuity, gold-rush chaos, vigilante “justice,” Mormon pioneers, mining strikes, and Boise’s eternal identity crisis. Idaho is where contradictions thrive — prophets and paranoids, farmers and miners, militia bunkers and music festivals.

In Corn, Caucuses, and Catastrophes, Jordan Blake Carter takes listeners on a rollicking ride through Iowa’s past and present. From the Honey War fought over beehives to penny auctions that defied the banks, from floods that drowned cities to butter cows that drew crowds, Iowa has always been equal parts resilient and ridiculous. This is the state that feeds the nation, humiliates presidential candidates at the State Fair, and rebuilds after every disaster with casseroles in hand.

For the spiritually hungry but institutionally burned-out, Wild Faith is a tender, raw, and fiercely honest invitation to rediscover the sacred beyond the walls of religion. Part memoir, part meditation, this book speaks to those who have wandered, questioned, grieved, and hoped, often all at once. Through poetic storytelling, cultural reflection, and grounded spiritual wisdom, author Jordan Blake Carter explores what remains when dogma falls away and certainty runs dry. Wild Faith reimagines prayer, community, and belonging through the lens of mystery, embodiment, and radical grace.

Oregon isn’t tidy. It’s moody, messy, and gloriously contradictory. This is the state that bans Styrofoam but worships chainsaws, that rails against Californians while happily selling them real estate, and that brags about recycling while secretly hoarding sticky six-packs in the garage. In this sharp, funny, and unapologetically honest history, Oregon struts onto the stage as the Pacific Northwest’s moody teenager — rebellious, misunderstood, and always dramatic.

This is not your high school history. From atomic showgirls and quickie divorces to Burning Man billionaires and desert survivalists, Nevada has built its reputation on contradictions. It is a place where nothing should have thrived and yet everything did, in the most outrageous ways possible. In this book, you’ll meet miners who gambled away fortunes before breakfast, mobsters who turned Vegas into a playground, politicians who looked the other way, and dreamers who set fire to wooden effigies in the desert just to see what would happen.

Between the letters in our Bibles and the rhythms of modern church life, a gap wide enough for the teachings of Jesus to slip into the background has opened. We still sing His name and quote His words. But too often, we sidestep the commands that cost us the most. In Living the Words We Skip, you’ll confront the hard truth: much of what passes for Christianity today would be unrecognizable to the Carpenter from Nazareth. Through Scripture, history, and examples, this book exposes how we’ve traded the cross for comfort, discipleship for affiliation, and the Kingdom for the empire’s approval.

Alaska’s history is as wild as its wilderness, and just as unwilling to be tamed. Before the Russians showed up for fur and trouble, Indigenous peoples had been thriving here for thousands of years, navigating ice, sea, and politics with skill that would make modern survival shows blush. Then came the explorers who “discovered” places already mapped in someone else’s memory, the gold rush stampedes, the salmon wars, the Japanese invasion in WWII, the oil-fueled pipeline boom, and the endless political battles over land, resources, and who gets to decide Alaska’s future.