This fall Mike Palecek's newest book will be released by New Leaf Books of Chicago. [The editor is Teresa Basille.]

"The Last Liberal Outlaw" tells the story of a small town [Iowa] newspaper editor fighting the proposed construction of a corporate federal prison near town.

Palecek lives in northwest Iowa with his wife Ruth and two kids. Mike is a former federal prisoner for peace, newspaper reporter, and was the Iowa Democratic Party's nominee for the U.S. House in the Fifth Distict, 2000 election.

For more information visit www.iowapeace.com.

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Excerpt from "The Last Liberal Outlaw":

"Having lived in the area most of his life, Tom knew that in northwest Iowa,
handmade boards and signs rented from U-Haul dot the highways: Are You a
Slave to Alcohol?; If Your Bible is in Good Shape, You Probably Aren’t; God
Bless America.

"But pockets of cynical populists also inhabit the back country, waiting.
They do not put messages on their lawns. They send joke suggestions to
Garrison Keillor and review new fiction for the New Yorker. Their
grandfathers loved Eugene Debs and Robert La Follette and learned to
despise Woodrow Wilson. Their grandmothers admired Dorothy Day and Jeannette
Rankin. And they learned at their knees about a day when life was hands-on: when people read and cared about what was happening, and followed the deeds of national leaders as if they were sitting at the weekly sales barn auction or reading the minutes of the local school board meeting or coop association.

"They followed Jack Reed and his fascination with the Russian revolution. They rooted for Marshalltown’s Jean Seberg, hoping the government would leave her alone. It angered them when they read that she had died.

"They go to the church meetings and school plays realizing they enter and
exit always slightly out of step with their neighbors.

"At election time they enter the middle school gym with seed corn caps in
hand, write-in their wildest hopes, then go home to milk, leaving the radio
on into the night. They mow their lawns, scoop their walks—looking up every
now and again at the sound of the city snowplow scraping, listening for the
revolution."