Featuring 2+ Hours of Music, EFX, and Narration by Acclaimed Voice Actor George Orlando
(Jan 14) The latest release from Mike Sager, best-selling author, award-winning reporter, and esteemed writer for The Washington Post, Rolling Stone and Esquire for more than forty years, is now available as an audiobook via Amazon. The brand-new audiobook version of SHAMAN clocks in at 2 hours and 34 minutes and features music, EFX, and narration by George Orlando, recently named one of the Top Voquent voice actors of 2020, and voice of Sager’s first book, Scary Monsters and Super Freaks.
In 2020, Sager and his company, The Sager Group, partnered with digital publisher NeoText to release SHAMAN, an illuminating deep dive into the life and death of controversial figure Carlos Casteneda. Some say Castaneda was a breakthrough academic and visionary shaman. Others say he was a sham. Either way, he shaped a generation of mystical thinkers and magic mushroom eaters when in 1968, at the height of the psychedelic age, Castaneda published The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge, the first of twelve books describing his apprenticeship to an Indian shaman and his journeys to the “separate reality” of the sorcerers’ worlds. Over time, The Teachings of Don Juan and its sequels became essential reading for legions of truth seekers. Castaneda himself became a cult figure—seldom seen, nearly mythological, a cross between Timothy Leary and L. Ron Hubbard. But although Castaneda had more than ten million books in print in seventeen languages and made the cover of Time magazine, he lived in anonymity for 30 years. And upon his death in 1998, things became even more murky as the stories Castaneda built his reputation on began to unravel.
“Castenada lived a mysterious and deceptive life, and yet the lessons he taught have stayed with me: to live every day as an Impeccable Warrior,” says Sager. “In order to render this colorful life with justice, we’ve created a unique audiobook that includes a soundtrack and sound effects. Like his life, it promises to be a unique and entertaining ride for listeners.”
Sager is a practitioner of a form of journalism that some have called “literary anthropology”; he has lived with teenage pit bull fighters in the Philadelphia barrio; Palestinians in the Gaza Strip; heroin addicts on the Lower East Side; Aryan Nations troopers in Idaho; U.S. Marines at Camp Pendleton; Tupperware saleswomen in suburban Maryland; and more. In SHAMAN, Sager turns his incisive reporter’s eye on Castenada in a year-long investigation into Castaneda’s mysterious life and impeccable death—the first of its kind—as told by his wife, his adopted son, his mistresses, and his followers.
Illuminating, engrossing, and brilliantly told, SHAMAN is currently available as an audiobook and can be found on Audible and Amazon. Links and further info are here at The Sager Group’s website. Ebook or paperback versions are available via NeoText’s website and wherever books are sold.
For more updates on NeoText, follow them on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram and visit www.neotextcorp.com.
Mike Sager is a best-selling author and award-winning reporter. A former Washington Post staff writer and contributing editor to Rolling Stone, he has written for Esquire for more than thirty years. Sager is the author or editor of more than a dozen books, including anthologies, novels, a biography, and textbooks. In 2010 he won the National Magazine Award for profile writing. Several of his stories have inspired films and documentaries; he is editor and publisher of TheSagerGroup.net. For more information, please see MikeSager.com.
