The Drum That Beats Within Us

M I K E B O N D is the author of nearly a dozen best-selling novels, a war and human rights journalist, ecologist, international energy expert and award-winning poet. He has been called "the master of the existential thriller" (BBC), "one of America's best thriller writers" (Culture Buzz), "a nature writer of the caliber of Matthiessen" (WordDreams), and "one of the 21st Century's most exciting authors" (Washington Times).He has covered wars, revolutions, terrorism, military dictatorships and death squads in the Middle East, Latin America, Asia and Africa, and environmental issues including elephant poaching, habitat loss, wilderness survival, whales, wolves and many other endangered species.
His novels place the reader in intense experiences in the world's most perilous places, in dangerous liaisons, political and corporate conspiracies, wars and revolutions, making "readers sweat with [their] relentless pace" (Kirkus) "in that fatalistic margin where life and death are one and the existential reality leaves one caring only to survive." (Sunday Oregonian).
He has climbed mountains on every continent and trekked more than 50,000 miles in the Himalayas, Mongolia, Russia, Europe, New Zealand, North and South America, and Africa.

For film, translation or publication rights, or for interviews contact:
Meryl Moss Media
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MikeBondBooks.com

The tradition of the poet warrior endures throughout human history, finding expression in the Bible's King David, the Vikings of Iceland, Japan's Samurai, the Shambhala teachings of Tibet, the ancient Greeks and medieval knights. Mike Bond, an award-winning poet, critically acclaimed novelist, ecologist, and war and human rights journalist, is in the same tradition.
Initially published by Lawrence Ferlinghetti in City Lights Books, Bond has won multiple prizes for his poetry and prose, and now brings the multitude of his diverse life to his remarkable new book of poetry. His poetry dances between reflections on the majesty of wilderness, the joys and sorrows of love, and passionate expressions of life's greatest existential questions. Prefacing the book is Bond's insightful essay on why poetry is an essential part of cognitive awareness, "how we find meaning in the incomprehensible, beautiful, tragic and sacred mystery of life."
Poetry, Bond notes, has existed since our Paleolithic days, found not just in humans but also in the songs of wolves and whales, and an imperative for everyone to enjoy. "Reading poems enlarges our personal awareness of life's exuberance, its terrible destiny," he says. "To learn in our own lives from the visions of others."