If You Don't Give Me Heaven

If you don't give me Heaven, I'll raise hell-'til it's Heaven

-Jay-Z

Go ahead, put this book down. You're probably one of those people who reads blurbs on the back of books and bases their decision on whether or not to buy it without even flipping through the pages. And even if you did you'd probably say, "Whoa, this is way too thought-provoking. Let me see if that guy who wrote The Da Vinci Code has anything new out. I really enjoyed that book."

So you'll put the book down and return to your mediocre unenlightened existence, having never experienced the genius of Noel Rogers. But don't let his ego fool you. The pages underneath this blurb are a giant bomb of knowledge that has waited twenty-eight years to drop into our collective consciousness. This is the most important book of the 21st Century-um, so far.

Take a trip into the mind of an artist who began life scared and alone, grew up angry and doubtful, but ends up believing in anything, everything and nothing all at once. If You Don't Give Me Heaven is a crazy concoction of metaphysical madness. There's something for everyone (yes, even you): rants, reflections and revelations. But don't let the alliteration fool you. Noel plays the tortured-soul angle like a finely tuned Theremin. He piles meta upon meta of self-reference on top of each other and still comes out sane. He remixes fact and fiction so seamlessly that there is no longer a difference between the two. He lifts us out of our mediocre, unenlightened lives and into the craziest reality ever.

Stop reading this. Flip the book over. Turn the first page. Keep going. It will all make sense if you have three brain cells.

-Marcus D'Ambrose

Teacher, Hero