The great troubles afflicting humanity—war, infectious disease, economic recession, terrorism, family discord, psychological trauma, human rights violations—dilemmas that appear unsolvable, actually originate when—without truthful self-reflection—we glorify mediocrity rather than strive to excel. – Dr. John Carvalho
AuthorHouse is thrilled to kick off the weekend by introducing Dr. John Carvalho. Not only was John’s self-published book, The Crisis of Our Time, submitted for the Pulitzer Prize (Autobiography/ Biography category) in 2014, John was also nominated “Best Literary Writer” by the Artists in Music Awards (AIMA) last July.
Dr. Carvalho recently kicked off a Barnes & Noble book tour in San Diego, and we’re grateful that he could spare some time to talk with Author’s Digest.
John, please tell us about yourself.
I like to call myself a “Renaissance Scholar” because of my diverse scholarly interests and various humanitarian activities. In terms of my professional background, I am a biological and biomedical researcher who has worked in the fields of microbiology and public health. I hold a Postdoctoral Fellowship in Virology from Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts; a Ph.D. in Molecular Genetics from the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis; and a B.Sc. in Biology from University of Dallas in Irving, Texas. I have acted as a member of numerous scholarly and professional societies, and as a professor, researcher and lecturer at various academic institutions.
Apart from my scholarly pursuits in the sciences, I’m also a philosopher, world traveler, political statesman, and human rights activist. In the past six years, I’ve also acted as an advocate for the arts, entertainment, and culture in the city of Hollywood, California. As a result of these diverse interests, I’ve been able to see how academia, world affairs, and communication intersect, and I’ve utilized that knowledge to write my new book The Crisis of Our Time.
Were there any authors or books that influenced your style or choice of genre?
My book is a memoir and discussion on world problems, and my philosophical resolutions to them. Much of my literary influence came from the lineage of philosophical writings stemming from the Ancient Greeks (Plato and Aristotle) to the Medievalists (Anselm and Aquinas), the Renaissance thinkers (Descartes), the German-Romantic Idealists (Kant and Hegel), and the modern day philosophers and process thinkers.
The science information has largely been 20 years in the making and has encompassed the ideas of many science articles and books, and the scholars are too many to list here (though Paul Davies, Jane Goodall, Ernst Mayr, Edward O. Wilson, and Paul Farmer come to mind). The economists Jeffrey Sachs, Tomas L. Friedman, and David and Robert Weidemer have influenced my interest in economics. As for literature itself, I have always loved the great classicists like Tolstoy and Hugo, and I have taken interest in modern writers such as Jose Saramago and Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
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We’ll present the second part of our interview with Dr. John Carvalho next week. In the meantime, you can pick up his book, The Crisis of Our Time, in the AuthorHouse Bookstore.
