Showing results by author "James Johnson" in All Categories

What was communism really? And why won’t the dream die? In this book, JJ strips away the Cold War cartoons, authoritarian cosplay, and capitalist propaganda to ask a much simpler question: What if we didn’t have to live like this? COMMUNISM: The Dream That Got Buried isn’t a defense of tyrants or a call for revolution. It’s a story about the dream that said we could build a world without bosses, billionaires, or survival-for-sale economics. A dream that terrified the powerful, got twisted by dictators, and was buried under branding before it ever got a real chance.

Steve Jobs didn’t invent the future. He made it feel inevitable. From a California garage to global godhood, this is the story of the man who turned computers into companions, products into rituals, and simplicity into a cult. But beneath the keynote charisma and polished glass lies something deeper: obsession, control, intuition, rage, and raw design philosophy that reshaped the modern world. Jobs: The Man Behind the Glass goes beyond the black turtleneck myth to uncover the ghost still flickering inside every screen. Because what he built wasn’t just a company.

Science isn’t a subject — it’s a system. A way of seeing, testing, and making sense of everything. From ancient myths to AI-powered labs, Science 101 tells the story of how humans figured out how to figure things out. This isn’t about listing facts or memorizing disciplines — it’s about the evolution of the scientific mindset. How did we go from believing lightning was a god… to splitting atoms? How did we learn to measure, test, repeat, and doubt? And what happens when machines start doing the science for us?

DAYTON: The City That Invented the Future is a raw, heartfelt, and sharply written portrait of one of America’s most important and misunderstood cities. From the Wright brothers to Funk music, from NCR to GM, from the Great Flood to the Oregon District, JJ walks through the neighborhoods, memories, machines, and people that made Dayton what it is. But this isn’t just a local history book. It’s personal. And it’s layered. Told through the eyes of someone who grew up here, it's part memoir, part diagnosis, and part love letter to a city that changed the world and got left behind in the process.

Before grammar, stories, or history, there was pointing. Grunting. Guesswork. And somehow, from that, we built language. This isn’t a textbook. It’s the story of how humans learned to name the world, how we stitched together meaning from noise, and how the system we invented ended up running us. From cave mouths to cuneiform, slang to syntax, sacred scripts to AI chatbots, this book tells the full arc of the original human software: invented, forgotten, rediscovered, and now automated. This Is a Rock doesn’t teach you how to talk. It shows you how we figured out that we could.

Who put them in charge? And why did everyone else listen? Government 101: A History of Rule is a gripping walkthrough of how human beings have governed each other — from tribal chiefs and god-kings to empires, revolutions, bureaucracies, and beyond. This isn’t a textbook. It’s not about “how a bill becomes a law.” It’s about power — how it’s taken, how it’s enforced, how it breaks, and how it evolves. JJ breaks down the real story behind human rule.

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.

He claimed descent from Genghis Khan. He claimed to fight for God. But what he really worshipped… was conquest. This is the story of Timur, the man who turned Central Asia into a slaughterhouse and ruled an empire stitched together with blood, bone, and fear. From Persia to Delhi, Baghdad to Ankara, no civilization was safe. He left cities in ash, pyramids of skulls in his wake, and a myth that outlived his empire. He defeated the Ottomans. He threatened the Ming. He wrote letters to kings and Popes while stuffing emperors in cages.

They say we’re broke. They say taxes are necessary. But the richest people on Earth don’t pay them and never have. This book exposes the quiet engine behind modern inequality: the global tax system, gutted by design. The billionaires didn’t cheat the rules. They wrote them. And while you pay more every year in rent, bills, and invisible fees, they move their money through shell companies, offshore trusts, and loopholes hidden in plain sight. Off the Books is not a theory.

What happens when power slips — or gets ripped — out of the ruling class’s hands? Revolution: How the World Changed Hands is a global walk through the most seismic uprisings in human history — from the fall of the pharaohs to the rise of the people. This isn’t about peaceful transitions or symbolic gestures. It’s about the real revolutions: the ones that tore systems apart, shattered empires, and rewrote the rules. You’ll find slave uprisings that built nations, students who brought regimes to their knees, and tweets that toppled tyrants.

John Lennon wasn’t just a Beatle. He was a symbol of a generation and a mirror for its contradictions. From the angry boy in wartime Liverpool to the radical artist tracked by the FBI, LENNON tells the story of a man who refused to stay still. This book is not a list of dates and albums. It’s a life, told as a story. You’ll follow the Beatles’ rise and fall through Lennon’s eyes. You’ll see the costs of fame, the power of protest, and the quiet redemption of fatherhood. You’ll watch him burn everything down just to find out what was real.

Bill Gates didn’t invent the computer. He didn’t design the first operating system. He didn’t even finish college. And yet — his fingerprints are on every desktop, every spreadsheet, every mouse click that reshaped the modern world. This biography reveals the man behind the myth, the moves behind the money, and the mind behind Microsoft.

He didn’t mean to change the universe. He just wanted to fix the math. In 1900, Max Planck made a desperate move. Faced with a broken theory about glowing ovens, he made a strange assumption: that energy might come in chunks. Not waves. Not flows. Packets. He thought it was a trick. It turned out to be the truth. PLANCK tells the story of the man who accidentally launched quantum physics. A quiet German physicist with a love of order, Planck found a constant, a single number. that would redefine energy, time, and the limits of the universe itself.

What do North Korea, Iran, and Saudi Arabia have in common? They all made the list — and not the good kind. Control Freaks is a ruthless, unfiltered tour through the 10 most strict countries on Earth — where joy is illegal, jokes are treason, and your haircut can land you in prison. This isn’t just a list of bad regimes. It’s a blueprint of how control works — how governments weaponize culture, religion, fear, surveillance, and even silence to stamp out identity and obedience.

What if the thing you crave most… was never food at all? Fast food is not just a convenience. It’s not just a guilty pleasure. It’s a chemically engineered system. Designed in labs, tested on brains, and built to override your biology. You’re not weak. You’re wired. Biochemical Romance is a deep-dive into how fast food hijacked your appetite, rewrote your hormones, broke your gut, and left your brain chasing a feeling it can’t even name. JJ tears the wrapper off the billion-dollar industry that sells addiction by the combo meal. This is not a diet book. This is not a cleanse.

We used to believe in everything. Thunder had a name. The wind had a temper. The sun rode across the sky in a chariot, and the dead needed directions to find the afterlife. This is the story of how humans turned fear into firelight, rituals into religions, and mystery into mythology. From bone dolls in caves to modern AI cults, From Gods to God traces the full arc of belief — how we invented gods, gave them faces, wrote them books, and then slowly stopped believing in them altogether. It’s not about faith. It’s about why we ever needed it.

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.

Why do we have bodies? Where did this weird meat suit come from? And how did we go from ancient guesses about "black bile" to installing pacemakers and printing 3D organs? In this audiobook, JJ takes you on a full-body tour through the history of anatomy, from mummified pharaohs to modern mind uploads. We crack it open, name the parts, track the fluids, x-ray the bones, and watch as the human body goes from sacred vessel to scanned-and-sold biometric data. This isn't a textbook. It's a scalpel with jokes. And it's got everything inside.

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.

Plato wasn’t just a philosopher, he was the architect of the mind. Born into a collapsing democracy, haunted by the death of Socrates, and obsessed with a world that didn’t yet exist, Plato set out to do the impossible: rebuild reality from scratch.