How I Made $3,200,000 from My Hobby
Maxwell Smythe Brown IV is a smart-ass by design. To counter the ridicule his fancy name attracted, Brown the child became the point person in pranks, taunts, and mischief that kept him in hot water with teachers, principals, clerics and coaches. As he grew older, he added irreverence to mischievousness and his circle of victims and antagonists expanded to include military commanders, bosses and colleagues. When his clever speech and picaresque ways help him win the hand of a stunningly beautiful woman, it goes wrong; she's dismally unsuited for marriage and makes his life miserable. There are occasional bright spots: his disregard for authority and convention helps him survive the Vietnam war. But his inability to keep his mouth shut and his fly zipped costs him his university sinecure and he's exiled to Dhaka, Bangladesh.
Three hundred years earlier the great Moghul Khan Shaista abruptly abandoned his post in the same city. The Khan's youngest and favorite daughter had succumbed to disease and the grief stricken Khan fled the country, but not – it is believed – before burying a treasure as a memorial to her short life.
For three centuries fortune hunters have searched for the rumored treasure but Brown has an advantage. As an accessory to a pretentious name he's taken on a pretentious hobby: collecting antiquarian maps. Initially unaware of the importance of the information on one of his old maps, Brown sets in motion events that bring him closer to the treasure, but also attract the competitive attention of six brutal castoffs of an Indian intelligence service. Before the dust settles, two men have been beheaded, another skinned, a bystander strangled and two more fatally shot.
Throughout, Professor Brown is our acerbic guide to: an unholy war, college campuses in the 70's, a university exhibiting signs of tenure-induced rigor mortis, a Thai brothel, the watering holes of Europe, and life in the bottom-most percentile of the third world.
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How I Made $3,200,000 from My Hobby
Maxwell Smythe Brown IV is a smart-ass by design. To counter the ridicule his fancy name attracted, Brown the child became the point person in pranks, taunts, and mischief that kept him in hot water with teachers, principals, clerics and coaches. As he grew older, he added irreverence to mischievousness and his circle of victims and antagonists expanded to include military commanders, bosses and colleagues. When his clever speech and picaresque ways help him win the hand of a stunningly beautiful woman, it goes wrong; she's dismally unsuited for marriage and makes his life miserable. There are occasional bright spots: his disregard for authority and convention helps him survive the Vietnam war. But his inability to keep his mouth shut and his fly zipped costs him his university sinecure and he's exiled to Dhaka, Bangladesh.
Three hundred years earlier the great Moghul Khan Shaista abruptly abandoned his post in the same city. The Khan's youngest and favorite daughter had succumbed to disease and the grief stricken Khan fled the country, but not – it is believed – before burying a treasure as a memorial to her short life.
For three centuries fortune hunters have searched for the rumored treasure but Brown has an advantage. As an accessory to a pretentious name he's taken on a pretentious hobby: collecting antiquarian maps. Initially unaware of the importance of the information on one of his old maps, Brown sets in motion events that bring him closer to the treasure, but also attract the competitive attention of six brutal castoffs of an Indian intelligence service. Before the dust settles, two men have been beheaded, another skinned, a bystander strangled and two more fatally shot.
Throughout, Professor Brown is our acerbic guide to: an unholy war, college campuses in the 70's, a university exhibiting signs of tenure-induced rigor mortis, a Thai brothel, the watering holes of Europe, and life in the bottom-most percentile of the third world.
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How I Made $3,200,000 from My Hobby

How I Made $3,200,000 from My Hobby

by Michael Bernhart
How I Made $3,200,000 from My Hobby

How I Made $3,200,000 from My Hobby

by Michael Bernhart

Hardcover

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Overview

Maxwell Smythe Brown IV is a smart-ass by design. To counter the ridicule his fancy name attracted, Brown the child became the point person in pranks, taunts, and mischief that kept him in hot water with teachers, principals, clerics and coaches. As he grew older, he added irreverence to mischievousness and his circle of victims and antagonists expanded to include military commanders, bosses and colleagues. When his clever speech and picaresque ways help him win the hand of a stunningly beautiful woman, it goes wrong; she's dismally unsuited for marriage and makes his life miserable. There are occasional bright spots: his disregard for authority and convention helps him survive the Vietnam war. But his inability to keep his mouth shut and his fly zipped costs him his university sinecure and he's exiled to Dhaka, Bangladesh.
Three hundred years earlier the great Moghul Khan Shaista abruptly abandoned his post in the same city. The Khan's youngest and favorite daughter had succumbed to disease and the grief stricken Khan fled the country, but not – it is believed – before burying a treasure as a memorial to her short life.
For three centuries fortune hunters have searched for the rumored treasure but Brown has an advantage. As an accessory to a pretentious name he's taken on a pretentious hobby: collecting antiquarian maps. Initially unaware of the importance of the information on one of his old maps, Brown sets in motion events that bring him closer to the treasure, but also attract the competitive attention of six brutal castoffs of an Indian intelligence service. Before the dust settles, two men have been beheaded, another skinned, a bystander strangled and two more fatally shot.
Throughout, Professor Brown is our acerbic guide to: an unholy war, college campuses in the 70's, a university exhibiting signs of tenure-induced rigor mortis, a Thai brothel, the watering holes of Europe, and life in the bottom-most percentile of the third world.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780997616071
Publisher: Hough Publishing, LLC
Publication date: 05/20/2016
Series: The Max Brown Tetralogy (+1) , #1
Pages: 452
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.13(d)

About the Author

Michael Bernhart is an award winning author who has published extensively on international development and public health. His credentials for this written outpouring are a PhD from MIT and four decades of international work - currently 50 countries and counting.

The journey from writing funding proposals to writing pure fiction was short and easy. The result is the MaxBrown tetralogy (+1) which traces the arc (from age 10 through 68) of a man who tries to be proactive, but whose behavior is driven by external events. Each of the four novels finds Max struggling with a new existential crisis - or crises- as he grows up in these trying times. Manhood used to be a birthright; now it seems to be an unending series of challenges. Each novel also finds Max confronting a new face of evil.

The novels occupy an emerging genre provisionally dubbed 'philosophical thrillers.'

Dr. (why not use it?) Bernhart started this project before the internet could serve up virtual experiences to authors.The contextual information and situations come from service as a pilot in the USAF, living in Asia, Europe and Latin America, and inexplicable success at snaring women well out of his league. These remarkable similarities with the main character noted, he insists the work is not autobiographical. It's wish fulfillment.

Bernhart currently lives in a yurt on a mountaintop in northern Georgia with one ex-wife, two daughters, and three cats. He still flies his vintage plane, although more cautiously than before, and he's unshakeable in his conviction that he's God's Gift to Aviation.
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