Short Tragic

When author Jeff Hobbs arrived at Yale University, he became fast friends with the man who would be his college roommate for four years, Robert Peace. Robert's life was rough from the beginning in the crime-ridden streets of Newark in the 1980s, with his father in jail and his mother earning less than $15,000 a year. But Robert was a brilliant student, and it was supposed to get easier when he was accepted to Yale, where he studied molecular biochemistry and biophysics.

An intimate account of the Spitzer administration, one man's political downfall, and the enduring friendship between two complex men. The March 10, 2008, disclosure that Governor Eliot Spitzer had patronized prostitutes from the Emperor's Club VIP sex ring shocked New Yorkers and his admirers around the world, who had celebrated Spitzer as the "Sheriff of Wall Street" and a likely future U.S. president. Ironically, one man's disillusionment with Spitzer had begun to disappear 15 hours earlier, when Spitzer confessed what the rest of the world would soon learn in a media storm of unprecedented intensity.

The four-year-old Brandon Sims had not been seen since July 3, 1992, when he attended a birthday party with his 20-year-old mother, Michelle Jones. For years, Jones lied to her friends about Brandon, telling some that he was living with his father and others that he was staying with his grandmother in another state. When Brandon’s father, who had been in jail, came looking for Brandon, Michelle’s shocked friends confronted her. She confessed that Brandon was dead. She repeated her story of how Brandon died to a detective. The detective didn’t believe her story.

Playacho is a philosophical short story that discusses a special situation that persisted in the world for a while and in which many people fell victim. In which a person wears a clown mask, I wonder why he did that, and when will he be allowed to take off the playacho mask?

Tragedy is one of the greatest challenges to resilience, and the ability to be resilient is a defining characteristic of a hero. In these two short tales, author Michael Haase takes a concise and focused magnifying glass as two different heroes face ultimate tragedies in their lives. Two different types of resilience are explored, and both ask the listener to consider their own choices in the face of tragedy.

Hundreds of movies and thousands of books have been written about the heroes of World War II. For dozens of years, however, few people knew about one of the greatest heroes of the war - a mild-mannered, eccentric mathematician from the University of Cambridge. This man, an undeniable genius whose later life was plagued by controversy and tragedy, probably played a greater role in the eventual Allied victory than anyone else. Until quite recently his contribution to the war effort was barely recognized. This is his incredible story.