Reymond's NIMRODIA Cited in Boyd's BABEL

Samuel L. Boyd's Babel and Eric Reymond's Nimrodia

We are pleased to learn Eric Reymond's poetry collection Nimrodia [New Texture] is cited in Samuel L. Boyd's Babel: Political Rhetoric of a Confused Legacy [Fortress Press]. From the Fortress Press website:

In Babel: Political Rhetoric of a Confused Legacy, Samuel L. Boyd offers a new reading of the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11:1-9. Using recent insights on the rhetoric of Neo-Assyrian politics and its ideology of governance as well as advances in biblical studies, Boyd shows how the Tower of Babel was not originally about a tower, Babylon, or the advent of multilingualism, at least in the earliest phases of the history and literary context of the story.

...

Boyd explores this intellectual history of the passage into current events in the twenty-first century and offers perspectives on how a new reading of the Tower of Babel can speak to the current cultural and political moment and offer correctives on the uses and abuses of the Bible in the public sphere.

Nimrodia appears via an epigraph in Babel's third chapter, "Words Have Consequences":

"A tower can be made with only two bricks or two words."

Its footnote reads:

Eric Reymond, "Similitudes of Nimrod," in Nimrodia (New Texture, 2018). See further Reymond's ability to capture the constructive possibility of words and the building of the tower:

Congratulations to Professor Reymond, and kudos to Professor Boyd for his good taste and recognition of Reymond's achievement.

About Nimrodia:

Nimrodia, pronounced /nim-raw-di-a/ or /nim-row-di-a/, is the title of an imagined body of literature about the biblical king who is said to have constructed the Tower of Babel. The longest poem of the book imagines the king’s perspective on his famous tower, as well as that of his underlings, exploring the egotistical and altruistic inspirations for it. While visual art and ancient history are the starting point for most of the poems in this collection, the contemporary world intersects with these domains again and again. We are reminded that though language, culture, and time may divide us, these are also the forces that link us together.

Preview and buy Nimrodia from Amazon HERE.

Steve Carroll Writes Gets Weird With ATOMIC WEREWOLVES

"Quite simply, spectacular."

In a season of weird doings, Steve Carroll Writes braves an exploration of The Men's Adventure Library anthology, Atomic Werewolves and Man-Eating Plants:

The book itself is simply gorgeous... Lavishly illustrated with many covers reproduced in full color, this is essentially a coffee table book dedicated to “when men’s adventure magazines got weird,” as the cover’s subtitle aptly describes. All in all, this book is an effort of pure love for the genre.

Bob Deis and Wyatt Doyle have put together yet another archive of great worth, both for collectors and fans. I cannot recommend this collection highly enough and would go on record that it is essential to the preservation of the historic MAM as a uniquely American literary institution. 

Steve's review takes readers through the collection with story by story commentary. Read his thoughts in full at Steve Carroll Writes, HERE.

Edited by Robert Deis and Wyatt Doyle, Atomic Werewolves and Man-Eating Plants is part of the Men's Adventure Library series, and is available now in softcover and as an expanded hardcover with bonus material. Buy it HERE.

Great Minds: Two Takes on I WATCHED THEM EAT ME ALIVE

BookTubers—readers and critics who share their reading and opinions on YouTube—have quickly become some of the best (and most entertaining) resources online for those who embrace the wild, the obscure, and the strange in fiction.

In short, our kind of people.

Tim from Secret Fire Books and Jeff from Jeff's Cave of Cool Books both recently posted their thoughts on The Men's Adventure Library's I Watched Them Eat Me Alive collection, and while it's safe to say they both enjoyed the book equally, their videos discussing it make for an appealing contrast.

Jeff aptly describes Deis' and Doyle's pair of introductions to the book (subtitled Two Takes on Killer Creatures in Men's Adventure Mags) as "two takes, but they are not in opposition, just complimenting each other." The same might be said of these two BookTubers' approach to the same book.

Tim at Secret Fire Books was the first to post his thoughts. Tim's got a big personality, a knowledgeable and enthusiastic bookshopping pal who wants to make sure you don't miss the good stuff as you navigate the stacks. He takes the viewer through some of the books' highlights, offering fun commentary on stories (and especially the artwork) that fills the book. 

"It's gorgeous, I love it so much. So freakin' cool... Robert and Wyatt have been doing a great job with The Men's Adventure Library. This was fantastic!"

Tim reviews the hardcover edition, which includes additional content the softcover does not. Watch Secret Fire Books' video HERE. 

Tim from Secret Fire Books

Jeff from Jeff's Cave of Cool Books reviews the softcover edition. He has a low-key style and takes a different approach, providing an in-depth page-through that explores the book from cover to cover, commenting in detail not only on the book's stories and artwork, but on The Men's Adventure Library more broadly, alerting viewers to our other books that Eat Me references in its text.

Jeff from Jeff's Book Cave

Jeff really gets what we're trying to do, both in Eat Me specifically, as well as our broader goals for The Men's Adventure Library. We try to bake in little clues and cues in our books to reward regular readers of the series, and I think Jeff caught all of them. Watch Jeff's Cave of Cool Books' video HERE.

It's a rewarding thing to have your work reviewed and analyzed by readers who bring such sincere enthusiasm and appreciation for our efforts. These guys read a lot of books in this area, and it's meaningful to know they are digging what we do. 

Our thanks to Tim and Jeff, and to all the BookTubers who embrace what we do and help spread the word about it.

I Watched Them Eat Me Alive is available from Amazon as a 120-page softcover and 128-page expanded hardcover HERE.

Swipe File: "Surf Pack Assassins," "Hell Surfers," and CAPTAIN SAVAGE

First, there were the Surf Pack Assassins, in the August 1967 issue of Male magazine. Story by Walter Kaylin, writing under his frequent nom de plume Roland Empey. Male was published by Magazine Management Company.

"Mag Mang" was also the birthplace of Marvel Comics. So perhaps it's not too surprising that a little over a year later, Marvel swiped the idea of surfing savages for their war title, Captain Savage and His Leatherneck Raiders in October, 1968.

Both illos were predated in print by another group of savage surfers, this gang with significantly less firepower, but no shortage of outrageousness. Of course I'm talking about Mort Künstler's equally jaw-dropping illustration for "The Hell Surfers," published in For Men Only in July 1967.

And, good news for fans of surf gang pulp: Mort Künstler's website offers prints of Mort's classic illo in two different sizes. You can order from the Mort store HERE.

 "Surf Pack Assassins" and its unforgettable Norem illustrations are included in the Men's Adventure Library's Walter Kaylin collection, He-Men, Bag Men, & Nymphos, available now.

Get Nymphos as a deluxe color hardcover from Amazon HERE.

Get Nymphos as a color softcover from Amazon HERE.

Get Nymphos as a deluxe color hardcover from co-editor Bob Deis HERE.

Get Nymphos as a color softcover from co-editor Bob Deis HERE.

Kaylin's NYMPHOS: Now in Color, Expanded Hard- and Softcover Editions

He-Men, Bag Men, & Nymphos collects highlights of Walter Kaylin's work for MAMs. It is now back in print from The Men's Adventure Library in bold new color editions, expanded from the out-of-print monochrome first edition. We are proud to present the book for the first time in color and celebrate the book's deluxe hardcover debut. 

But who was Walter Kaylin? Simple. Walter Kaylin was the MAM writer other MAM writers wanted to be.

Kaylin had an innate understanding of the highly specific needs of MAM fiction, and his work in the field across decades would help define the unique genre. But that once-in-a-career symbiosis came at a price: For decades, those musty, obscure magazines—most now well over half a century old, with copies hard to come by—have provided the sole portal to the majority of Kaylin’s prodigious output. 

Our priorities for the He-Men, Bag Men, & Nymphos collection were to present a selection of some of Kaylin’s most memorable stories, while also covering as many MAM obsessions and sub-genres as could reasonably fit between covers. You’ll read Kaylin takes on hard-boiled crime, Westerns, dark historical fiction, tropical adventure, revolutionary battle, alarmist non-fiction, a WWII “death trek” saga, reality-based survival, varied approaches to international espionage and intrigue, bogus biography, gangsters, humorous tall tales with a wartime theme and a sexy bent, and, in the new expanded hardcover edition, a highly unconventional animal attack story.

Our initial edition of this collection suffered from spotty distribution, making it less accessible to readers of what would become our acclaimed, multi-volume Men’s Adventure Library series. We also didn’t previously issue a hardcover, as has since become standard for the Library. We’re glad to put those issues right with these new, color editions, which include supplementary illustrations and commentary that further illuminate the range and quantity of Kaylin’s work in MAMs.

Includes a reminiscence by Kaylin's editor at Magazine Management Company, Bruce Jay Friedman.

Excerpted from "The Right Man for the Job" by Wyatt Doyle in He-Men, Bag Men, & Nymphos

Get Nymphos as a deluxe color hardcover from Amazon HERE.

Get Nymphos as a color softcover from Amazon HERE.

Get Nymphos as a deluxe color hardcover from co-editor Bob Deis HERE.

Get Nymphos as a color softcover from co-editor Bob Deis HERE.

...Just get Nymphos!

RIP Terence Stamp

Terence Stamp's first day shooting "Toby Dammit" with Fellini. (From Stamp's Double Feature.)

"Masters of MAMs": Wyatt Doyle at PulpFest 2025

 

Thanks to the kindness of fellow multi-hyphenate Sean CW Korsgaard, we're very pleased to share Wyatt Doyle's talk from PulpFest 2025: "Masters of MAMs." It's a brief overview of some of men's adventure magazines' (MAMs) leading lights from across their three decades of publication, with some explanation of why we believe they are important.

You can watch the whole 45-minute presentation via the embedded video above, or go directly to each subject by clicking their name below.

George Gross

Mort Künstler

Robert Silverberg

Lawrence Block

Samson Pollen

Eva Lynd

Walter Kaylin

Robert F. Dorr

Gil Cohen

Big thanks also to Bill Lampkin, Mike Chomko, and Jack Cullers for their heroic work keeping PulpFest alive and thriving every year. 

To purchase our releases focused on these luminaries, scroll the column on the right side of the site.

Michael K. Vaughan Picks WEASELS and NYMPHOS for GarbAugust!

"One must read Weasels Ripped My Flesh! for GarbAugust. One simply must." 

Thanks to our friends at Paperback Warrior, popular book vlogger Michael K. Vaughan is now the very happy owner of two of two deluxe hardcover editions from The Men's Adventure Library: Walter Kaylin's He-Men, Bag Men, & Nymphos, and Weasels Ripped My Flesh!

As you'll see in his July Book Mail video post below (titled "Weasels Ate My Postman"!), Vaughan couldn't be happier to receive the books, and immediately adds them to his GarbAugust reading list.

(What is GarbAugust? I refer you to the event's founder, CriminOlly.)

Michael, we can't wait to hear what you think of the books once you've tackled them...presuming you make it out in one piece.

Big thanks to Michael and to Paperback Warrior! 

Weasels Ripped My Flesh! is available in full-color softcover and deluxe hardcover editions. Buy from The Men's Adventure Library's co-editor Bob Deis HERE (free domestic shipping). Or buy from Amazon HERE.

He-Men, Bag Men, & Nymphos by Walter Kaylin is available in full-color softcover and deluxe expanded hardcover editions. Buy from The Men's Adventure Library's co-editor Bob Deis HERE (free domestic shipping). Or buy from Amazon HERE.