Have you read Overtaken By Events?
Posted by Ethan Casey on June 22, 2010 · 5 Comments
My new book, Overtaken By Events: A Pakistan Road Trip, has been published for a couple of months now. It has been selling well at public speaking events – mostly in California, which is where I’ve been able to travel so far – and bringing in some nice comments from early readers. For example:
“Loved your book! Must read again because I am finally understanding some of the headlines I’ve read in recent years. Very interesting, and again the personal reads like a novel. It is great!!!!!!” - Kathy Sheetz, Richmond, California
“It was great meeting you. I am really enjoying the books! They will be a great asset to the multi-cultural reading assignments I give out!” - Seema Gul, Mission Viejo, California
Overtaken By Events is an independent project, and its sales support my livelihood and my continued travel and speaking on behalf of a better human relationship between Pakistanis and Americans. Word of mouth is the most effective way to market books – and you can help. If you’ve read Overtaken By Events, post a comment on this page – and of course tell your family and friends, or even better buy copies for them.
I’ll be returning to Southern California and the Bay Area in the fall, and between September and November I also have trips scheduled to Colorado and the Southwest, the Northwest, Detroit, and the East Coast. See my calendar online, and consider inviting me to your city. I’m also working to make Overtaken By Events available in stores and other venues in Pakistan, hopefully before the end of this year.
I’m going to be offline until just after the July 4 holiday, then home in Seattle for the rest of the summer writing my new book with the working title Bearing the Bruise: A Lifetime in Haiti. I’m planning to publish Bearing the Bruise in late spring 2011. You can support it the way many of you supported Overtaken By Events - by pre-purchasing copies. It will include stories of Pakistani-American friends of mine who visited Haiti after the earthquake there this January, as well as stories from my own many visits to Haiti since 1982. I visited Haiti for five days this March and am planning a longer follow-up trip there in September.
So – I’ll be back in touch in early July. In the meantime, please post a comment here about Overtaken By Events, and continue helping me spread the word. I still need to send out some copies to people who purchased multiple copies – thank you for your patience; it’s been a very busy spring for me!
And here are links to two articles. One is my own short article about the May visit to Seattle by Todd Shea of SHINE Humanity. Todd and I will be doing some speaking together this fall in Colorado and elsewhere around the US:
Pakistan-Based “Go-to Guy for Disaster Relief” Visits UW
And here’s Ras Siddiqui’s very nice article in Pakistan Link about the May 28 fundraiser in Fremont, California for The Citizens Foundation, at which I spoke:
As a traveler who likes to learn from the people he meets, Casey adds himself in their lives and does not appear to be the detached foreigner in his writings. “I am not an expert on Pakistan,” he said. “I am a friend of Pakistan.” He added that he was the guy that keeps coming back. His recent article “Some of My Best Friends are Pakistanis” was widely read and appreciated by Pakistani-Americans during a very troubled time when the Times Square, New York attempted bombing associated with someone from within the community. He said that this kind of message needed to be sent to the mainstream community here in America by a non-Pakistani-American.
TCF Fundraiser in the San Francisco Bay Area, by Ras H. Siddiqui
Don’t forget to leave a comment below!
Thanks,
Ethan
Ethan,
I found ‘Overtaken by Events’ to be everything I had hoped it would be … a serious read about real people going about their daily endeavors in a country about which I know precious little. We can not all be expert, or even familiar, in every world region – and so books such as yours are imperative for readers who wish to open that window, unfiltered, onto countries that major US media do nothing meaningfully to examine.
Were it not for ‘Alive & Well’, ‘Overtaken’ and, I’m confident, your upcoming ‘Bearing the Bruise’, we’ll all go merrily along believing those whom we don’t know to be ‘terrorists’, ‘poor’, and benighted. Thank you for doing your bit to open that window.
Aaron Casey
Washington, DC
Hi Ethan,just finished your book,very interesting…am glad I brought it with me read it on my visit to karachi..what with the plane crash,the floods and now the unrest in karachi..there were so many things I could relate..missed reading more on karachi but even then loved it.
I know I should have started with ‘Alive and Well in pakistan’ but thats next.
Best wishes
Farheen
At a time when Americans are grasping at straws trying to understand South Asia – and the Pakistan-India nexus in particular – Ethan Casey’s book is fun and required reading.
If you’ve ever wondered why Kashmir is one of the planet’s shortest fuses, and why two nations that have so much in common are so suspicious of one another, Overtaken By Events is the book to read first.
William Kern
Executive Director
Managing Editor
Worldmeets.US
Thanks Ethan, your book is an insider’s view of the real situation in Pakistan. We really appreciate all your efforts for Pakistan.