"In plumbing the depths of America's subcultural fringes, Joseph L. Flatley may well be hitting on the pulse of what is driving our increasingly chaotic and strange zeitgeist." - J.G. Michael, Producer and Host of Parallax Views
"What Joseph L. Flatley has done here with New Age Grifter is to not only paint the portrait of a moment in time, imbue it with life and the appropriate madness and animate the characters, but to dig deep into where power, spirituality, and greed intersect and transform into something different, something terrifying." - Jared Yates Sexton, political analyst and author of American Rule: How a Nation Conquered the World But Failed Its People.
New Age Grifter moves along at a brisk clip, providing a clear background for understanding a controversial guru within the context of New Age religious movements. Joseph Flatley's account of the prophet from Pittsburgh is provocative, informative, and engaging.
Frequently provocative, New Age Grifter is always informative and entertaining. Yet Joseph Flatley also exposes the dangers that exist within abusive new religions. His book illuminates the controversies that surround a controversial New Age guru, all in an engaging style." - Rebecca Moore, Ph.D., Co-Director, The Jonestown Institute
"Part detective/part bemused spectator, Joseph L. Flatley deftly follows the trail of an aging hippie who somewhere along the line got dosed with a heavy hit of the Urantia Book and ultimately became known to the world (or at least to some residents of Tucson) as Gabriel, a wannabe rock star-turned-new age avatar and father figure to the flock of fawning supplicants who heeded his crazed clarion call." - Adam Gorightly, author of Saucers, Spooks and Kooks: UFO Disinformation in the Age of Aquarius
"With New Age Grifter, Joseph L. Flatley has produced a work of immersion anthropology worth scaling the compound walls for. But he did it the hard way, by talking his way past the desert gates into the center of a mystery more comic than cosmic. Give yourself a break from the nostalgia tours around Manson and Koresh and take this contemporary trip to the New Age Arizona community built around Gabriel of Urantia, aka TaliasVan, the most successful and least likely guru to ever emerge from under the industrial skylines of Flatley's hometown of Pittsburgh." - Alexander Zaitchik, journalist and author of The Gilded Rage: A Wild Ride Through Donald Trump's America
"An intimate look at the dark side of counterculture, New Age Grifter serves us up a story that has to be read to be believed... and heeded." - Jonathan Berman, director of Calling All Earthlings