Mark Sundeen

Order “The Man Who Quit Money” Now

Mark — Tue, 03 Jul 2012 23:09:05 +0000

From these stores:
Back of Beyond, Moab
Skylight Books, Los Angeles
Maria’s Bookshop, Durango
Kings English, Salt Lake City
Powells, Portland
IndieBound
iTunes
Barnes & Noble
Amazon

Sundeen and Suelo on MSNBC Dylan Ratigan Show

Mark — Sat, 16 Jun 2012 17:20:59 +0000

Suelo told me that religion can be a trojan horse within the walls of commercial civilization. Well, here he is on MSNBC talking about living with grace and love. And me talking about the Frankenstein monster we’ve created: the financial industry. It’s a 5 minute clip: watch it. Order The Man Who Quit Money here.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Why I Voted Republican

Mark — Thu, 31 May 2012 20:56:23 +0000

Montana has the quaint practice of mailing both parties’ primary ballots to absentee voters. As someone who since his first trip to the polls to vote for Dukakis has never gone Republican, I quickly throw the GOP ballot away (recycle it, if you must know.) I hate the Republican party as much as anyone; I think my working Howard Dean is ample enough evidence of that. But this year I dug through the junk mail and catalogs and retrieved the ballot, and voted for Ron Paul.

Although this action gives me the perverse pleasure of voting twice against Mitt Romney (also twice against Denny Rehberg!) it is not sabatoge. And although I don’t imagine Ron Paul ever being president, or really want him to be, it simply feels right to vote for the only guy on the national stage with the courage to describe our country as it is: bankrupting ourselves through endless war.

Who else besides tenured radical professors tells us that our form of government has devolved to corportism? And where else but Occupations and Quaker meetings can you here someone talk frankly about the military-industrial complex, a term that Democrats became afraid to speak, about the same time they became ashamed of being liberal (the Clinton years, to be exact.)

I’m 41 now. My country has been at war, all of them undeclared, more or less all my life. As much as I claim to oppose these wars, my money says otherwise: I pay taxes every day, month, year to help finance them. No national figure but Ron Paul is talking about this.

Join me at Taos Writers Conference

Mark — Wed, 16 May 2012 15:20:03 +0000

I’ll be teaching a workshop on Writing the Travel Memoir July 15-20

Watch BBC Mini-Doc on The Man Who Quit Money

Mark — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 04:24:17 +0000

Here. David Eckenrode’s gorgeous three minute film captures the essence of the book about Daniel Suelo.

Quit Money Day April 18

Mark — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 15:57:08 +0000

April 17 is Tax Day, when we look back on a year of hours worked, salaries earned, and dollars spent. Never do we feel more entwined in the money system and its tentacle institutions of banks and government. Let’s imagine greater independence from that system, and for one entire day, on April 18, neither spend, borrow, nor lend a single cent. Once you join this event, invite all your friends!

Sundeen and Suelo on RadioWest

Mark — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 14:40:35 +0000

Suelo and I spent an hour in the studio with Doug Fabrezio at KUER Salt Lake City, talking about The Man Who Quit Money. I’ve done a bunch of radio interviews in the past week, but if there’s one that … Continue reading →

Read an excerpt from The Man Who Quit Money

Mark — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 05:38:54 +0000

Here. There is also a Reading Group Guide with discussion questions.

Mark — Tue, 10 May 2011 20:11:19 +0000

Mark Sundeen is the author of The Man Who Quit Money, to be published by Riverhead/Penguin in 2012. His nonfiction has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Outside, National Geographic Adventure, the Believer, and elsewhere. His previous books are Car Camping (HarperCollins, 2000), The Making of Toro (Simon & Schuster, 2003), and North By Northwestern (St. Martin’s, 2010, co-written with Sig Hansen), which was a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller. He has taught fiction and nonfiction at the MFA creative writing programs at the University of New Mexico and Western Connecticut State University, as well as the Taos Summer Writers’ Conference. He lives in Montana and Utah.

Photo by Anna Hrnjak

New York Times: Walking the Guatemalan Highlands

Mark — Sat, 26 Mar 2011 15:37:34 +0000

WE walked into the village around dusk, but with the fog pouring down the dirt streets, it could have been anytime. It was cold, and I could hardly see across the concrete plaza. The Catholic church had been cleaved by an earthquake, the gap between its two halves now spanned with sheets of plywood, but that didn’t stop people from praying in the dank cavern on a floor littered with boughs of long green pine needles.

Our accommodations were a municipal building, a cinder block structure around a courtyard with a fountain that didn’t work and an ash heap where skinny mutts gnawed leftovers. We were to sleep on the tile floor of a room with no furniture and a nonfunctioning light bulb hanging from a wire. I recognized the place from Hollywood thrillers: this was where the narco-cartel tortured its enemies.
Read the story here.