THE HUMANIST MAGAZINE  features THE LETTER FROM DEATH, with reprints of Howard Zinn’s Foreword, an extended excerpt and selected illustrations.

“Death writes a missive of protest that begins with a taunt: “What do you know of me?  Nothing!”  Death, it seems, is sick and tired of being blamed for humankind’s wretched perversity and appalling destructiveness.  After observing us for so long and so intimately, while absorbing our contradictory feelings, Death, dignified, reasonable, and incisive, has a great deal to say about our fears, our tactics of coercion, and our grotesque habit of war.  In her fourth book, Moats performs an astonishing feat.  By imagining Death as a patient and suffering entity fluent in human affairs, she broaches matters of daunting complexity with galvanizing directness.  Accompanied by dramatic black-and-white illustrations, this clarion critique offers an arresting perspective on religion, our “growing militarism,” our “inexhaustible genius for denial,” and our paradoxical failure to nurture our best qualities.  What a startling, counterintuitive vision it is, to picture  Death learning from each of us, evolving, and now, as we risk catastrophic conflicts, beseeching us to turn away from violence and hate.  Moats has created a wise, unsettling, and beautiful book.”

“The wonderful stories in The Gate of Dreams are for all of us – regardless of age – who need only sylphs, sprites and a little magic to trip our most precious childhood fantasies.”

“Lillian Moats is a writer, artist and filmmaker whose animated art films have won more than 40 distinguished awards in festivals around the world.  Speak, Hands: A Meditation on Memory and the Unconscious is a kind of literary memoir in which she questions the very nature of memory while conveying her extraordinary personal and creative struggle to express her artistic conceptions.  Moats employs a complex narrative structure using four inner voices which challenge the distinctions between mind and body, subject and object, conscioiusness and the unconscious.  A simply fascinating read from beginning to end, Speak, Hands is intensely personal, intellectually stimulating, emotionally rewarding, and a uniquely crafted materpiece of creative non-fiction.  Also very highly recommended are her two earlier books: Legacy of Shadows (Three Arts Press, 1999) and The Gate of Dreams (Cranbrook Press, 1993, 1996) both of which are available from Three Arts Press.”

“This book will hold its readers close and tight, will teach them its remarkable, affecting and important lesson: that experiences live and last over a family’s generations as memories that shape hearts and minds.”

Michael Miner, Senior Editor of the CHICAGO READER , blogs about THE LETTER FROM DEATH

See David J. Moats’ illustrations from The Letter from Death on YouTube: “THE LETTER FROM DEATH-book illustrations”

Thank you, Booksellers!  The Letter from Death has been chosen as an Indie Next List Notable for October, 2009.