IRA LUNAN FERGUSON
UNOFFICIAL WEBSITE
BOOKS
83 Practical Philosophical Observations by an Octogenarian Psychologist

Dr. Ferguson is now in his 80s, an octogenarian. The 83 topics on which he writes briefly in this book cover a very wide range of most interesting, timely subjects that will catch and hold the attention of readers from all walks of life. They range from Beauty Pageants to Extraterrestrial life, from Policemen to Mother's Day, from Happy Marriages to Choosing a New Doctor, from Sex for Senior Citizens and the Handicapped to Why I Believe In God, and other topics just as interesting and timely, if not more so.

The wide-ranging topics covered in these 83 monographs from Beauty Pageants to Our Policemen, from Good Manners to Superstitions, Interreligious Marriages to Longevity, Education to Mother's Day, Prostitution to Why I Believe In God, The Ugly American to Heredity and Environment, Battered Spouses to Politicians and Political Parties, Choosing a New Doctor to There Is Extraterrestrial Life, Suicide to Why Did the Lord (Nature) Create Women Smaller, Lighter Weight, Less Violent, Less Strong, But Definitely Prettier Than Men?, Is There Life After Death?? to Happy Marriages, Interracial Marriages to Nulla Est Via Regia Ad Discendum (There Is No Royal Road to Learning), Sleep to Bigamy, Trigamy and Quadrigamy- to name but a few-will most certainly pique the curiosity and excite the interest of readers from all walks of life.

These 83 monographs will hold their undivided attention throughout the reading of this marvelous book. My wife and I can hardly wait for this, his 17th, book to come off the press. We know that in it we will find a treat awaiting us. Among the many books Ira Lunan Ferguson wrote and published are a marriage book for women and a marriage book for men. He showed me a copy of a letter from a lady in Massachusetts who had read his marriage book for women and wrote to compliment him. She particularly complimented him on "such profound common sense and words to the wise," to use her own words. And in the closing paragraph of her letter she wrote, "Your words and anecdotes are most encouraging, and it is a pleasure to be on this planet the same time you are."

Note that last sentence-what a beautiful thing to say to another human being living on the same planet! That lady expresses in her letter dated 16 February, 1984 just how Dr. Ferguson's friends, patients and readers feel toward him. In such uniquely beautiful language, her words give the measure of the man who has written this book, 83 Practical Philosophical Observations of an Octogenarian Psychologist.

This is a beautiful book my friend Dr. Ferguson has written, a wonderful book. Its wide encyclopedic range of practical philosophical topics makes it a book every professional man and woman in the United States should have in their libraries at home. It is indeed a most valuable book which I know readers will cherish and treasure as I will.

—NOBLE R. FRISBY, M.D.
Physician and Surgeon

Greenville
Mississippi

TABLE OF CONTENTS

FOLIO ONE

  1. Very Happy Wives Say, “Beat Me, But Don’t Leave Me!”
  2. Why I Believe in God
  3. Longevity
  4. Verbal Communication, Written Correspondence
  5. Good Manners
  6. 5-3 Gait, Or 8-5 Gait
  7. A Kiss a Day Keeps Divorce Lawyers Away
  8. Heredity and Environment
  9. We Take So Much for Granted
  10. A Look at Race and Color in America
  11. Mother’s Day

FOLIO TWO

  1. Why Did the Lord (Nature) Make Women Smaller, Lighter Weight, Less Violent, Less Strong, But Definitely Prettier Than Men?
  2. Honesty—Best Policy?
  3. A Sense of Humor
  4. Mend Your Fences Before It’s Too Late
  5. Men
  6. Teachers
  7. My Age? I Am…Er…Over 21
  8. Giving and Receiving Presents
  9. Is Homosexuality Necessary?
  10. Another Way to Say it—No 4-Letter Words!
  11. Our Policemen
  12. Choosing a New Doctor

FOLIO THREE

  1. Smoking and Drinking
  2. Superstitions
  3. Living Together—The “Unstructured Relationship”
  4. Crime and Punishment
  5. Imminent Population Explosion—Fact or Fancy? Myth or Reality?
  6. Interracial Marriage
  7. Travel Can Be Broadening
  8. No Children, No Dogs Allowed. Why?
  9. Money—Some Pros and Cons

FOLIO FOUR

  1. The Women’s Movement
  2. Can One “Try Not to Worry”?
  3. Juvenile Crimes
  4. Divorce
  5. Sex for Senior Citizens and the Handicapped
  6. I Do Believe in Miracles!
  7. Soliloquizing
  8. I Have No Illusions Regarding Lower Class People
  9. “Regurgitation” in Marriage

FOLIO FIVE

  1. Physical Handicaps Can Be a Challenge
  2. A Few Health Tips for Senior Citizens
  3. Hell Hath No Fury
  4. Sleep
  5. Bigamy, Trigamy, Quadrigamy
  6. Politicians and Political Parties
  7. Want a Happy Marriage? Read This!

FOLIO SIX

  1. Derma-Tactile Contact, Propinquity
  2. To Lie or Not to Lie? Here Is the Answer!
  3. Rape
  4. Who Has it Easier Finding a Suitable Mate, Men or Women? Men Do!
  5. Is There Life After Death?
  6. A Word About Churches, Clergymen, and Clergywomen
  7. Suicide
  8. Education
  9. Prostitution
  10. Conspicuous Consumption
  11. Different People, Different Treatment

FOLIO SEVEN

  1. It Is a Wise Father That Knows His Own Child
  2. The Ugly American
  3. How to Make and Keep Friends
  4. I Weigh 200 Lbs. I’ve Tried to Reduce, but…
  5. Incest
  6. The Dignity of Work
  7. Women
  8. Nulla Est Via Regia Ad Discendum (There Is No Royal Road to Learning)
  9. Square the Rod and Spoil the Child?
  10. Growing Old Gracefully, Not Disgracefully

FOLIO EIGHT

  1. Sexual Precocity and Promiscuity in Teenagers
  2. Interreligious Marriages
  3. Who Created and Rigorously Maintain the Double Standard? Women Do! Why?
  4. “But That Was a Long Time Ago!”
  5. Battered Spouses
  6. The Gospel of Soap and Water, Personal Cleanliness
  7. There Is Extraterrestrial Life!
  8. Do Clothes Make the Man? The Woman?
  9. Haven’t Got Time? Yes, You Do! Take Time! Make Time!
  10. Alimony
  11. Beauty Pageants Are Useful!
  12. On Recycled, Reconstructed, Reconditioned Southern Whites
  13. Why Was Jesus Chosen a Jew?
  14. The Hearts of Women Beat Faster Than the Hearts of Men

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A Sociological-Philosophical Psychological Litany of DOs and DON'Ts: A Most Original, Comprehensive, Valuable and Timely Guide for Safer, More Successful, Productive, Rewarding Living

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Facing Reality: A Functional Blueprint for Living

The author of FACING REALITY has applied its philosophy to various aspects of the life, ever emphasizing that one’s life adjustments are human problems most amenable to solution in cooperation with other human beings. He has studiously avoided garbling this philosophy in platitudinous generalizations, which, although often couched in the protective coloration of sesquipedalianic verbalization are not only trite, but actually say nothing, certainly do not serve as guides to action.

FACING REALITY magnificently fulfills a crying need in this period of perplexity and doubt, frustration and indecision, boredom and depression, when so many people are bogged down by embarrassing and delicate problems, real or imagined, with which they find themselves unable to cope. In the powerful searchlight and clearheaded logic and sound common sense thrown by the author on some of the most complicated human relationships, these seeming Gordion knots unravel themselves so easily that the solutions appear almost simple.

Examples of the brilliant and compact expositions of beclouded topics are evident in Dr. Ferguson’s demotition of “the world owes me a living” attitude, his treatment of retrospective value systems, the art of making and keeping friends, the appraisal of one’s own attributes and handicaps, strengths and weaknesses, analysis of relations between person and person, person and group, marital and parent-child relationships, the discussion of religion, education, crime and punishment, conventional and aberrant sexual relationships, alimony, suicide, work and recreation, growing old gracefully instead of disgracefully.

FACING REALITY will be used as an interdisciplinary textbook in senior colleges, junior colleges, community colleges, and professional schools, whose students will welcome the happy change from the rigid format of the traditional textbook. Easily comprehensible, and of engrossing interest to the average reader, it is an important contribution to applied philosophy and applied psychology. It will furnish an excellent source of relevant and apropos points of departure for cross-fertilization of ideas and for spirited discussions by college students and adult education students. Dr. Ferguson’s realistic approach—lucid, specific and practical—not only solves most of our pressing problems, but provides a treasure trove of authentic information and illuminating sidelights on these subjects which have a distinct therapeutic effect on the troubled, perplexed and disillusioned.

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I Dug Graves at Night to Attend College by Day (Volume II): My Later Years as a Naturalized West Indian-American

The reader is urged to read Volume I for background leading up to Volume II. Volume I describes young Ira Ferguson’s being brought to America as a boy of 15 to have his severely nearsighted eyes (20/700!) fitted with proper glasses. It is the story of his ambitious determination to amount to something, of his going to business college to be a banker, hoping thus to buy his mother a nice home. It tells of his unprecedented luck in getting a job through the white YMCA in Philadelphia as travelling stenographer to a tough Pennsylvania Dutchman, a successful businessman of Mifflinburg, Pa. The side-splitting stories of their hilarious experiences on the road will have the reader in stitches.

Then the scene shifts to Howard University, where the young man got a job as stenographer-bookkeeper, prepared for and passed the college entrance exams, and attended night classes. Later to day school, working nights at all sorts of manual labor, even digging graves for 25¢ an hour 12 hours a night to pay his tuition in college, medical school and graduate school during the depression. His wife’s death at the end of his second year in medical school left him with 3 small children, necessitated his dropping out again for 4 years. His entering graduate school at the University of Minnesota, with more interruptions, but earning 2 degrees there in Preventive Medicine & Public Health, his going to teach at Southern University, a Negro land grant college in Louisiana, during World War II, his publications, academic honors, listings in national biographical directories, his leaving the South to take the M.A. and Ph.D. at Columbia University, are all recorded in Volume I.

Volume II continues the chronicle, with Dr. Ferguson’s anger and frustration, when, with 5 degrees topped by the Ph.D. from Columbia, where his brilliant work had earned him appointment as President’s Scholar and election to still another graduate honor society, he was turned down for teaching positions by college after college in the North because of his race and color. He had to return South to teach in a Negro college, this time at Tuskegee Institute, Alabama, made famous by Booker T. Washington, its founder, and by Dr. George Washington Carver, the famous scientist.

At Tuskegee he dived into his work with a will, publishing articles in professional journals, delivering commencement addresses, co-authoring with his wife a pharmacology textbook published by W. B. Saunders Company of Philadelphia and London. His wife, a charming Minnesota girl he met at the University of Minnesota, is a Phi Beta Kappa honor graduate of the university, and has a master’s degree in mathematics. They made hosts of friends among the faculty and other professionals in Negro communities throughout the South. They left Tuskegee after 8 academic years when their premature infant daughter died following the bombing and burning of their college chapel during the orgy of burnings of Negro churches and Jewish synagogues by the Ku Klux Klan and White Citizens Councils. They went to California, where Dr. Ferguson took and passed the State Board of Medical Examiners, and opened his office as a Psychologist.

Volume II also discusses his practice, giving bird’s eye glimpses of some of his unique, interesting and challenging cases, his other professional activities, his wife’s contributions during the 20 years of their marriage, their travels to Europe, Africa and Asia, and his founding of the Lunan-Ferguson Library which now publishes his books. Humorous anecdotes anent their life in San Francisco, his practice and travels punctuate the chronicle to delight and enthrall. The reader will be intrigued by the author’s discussion of officers of the Ku Klux Klan—Wizard, Dragonds, Kludd, Klock, Hydras, their Klonvocation, the Klektoken (initiation fees), etc. And by such human interest features as the humble, totally illiterate Negro cow man (he choused cows) in Tuskegee, who made a bargain with Mrs. Ferguson to do all the heavy work around the house, yard and farm they’d planned, if she would teach him to read and write.

Volume I has been widely acclaimed by readers and reviewers as an epic. Within 10 months after publication, it had been ordered for the libraries of 137 representative and leading American colleges and universities, including Princeton, Columbia, Univ. of Mississippi, Univ. of San Francisco, College of the Virgin Islands, Tennessee Technological Univ., Western New Mexico Univ., Univ. of Michigan, Univ. of California, Fordham Univ., Univ. of New Hampshire, Knoxville College, McAllister College, Tennessee A & I State Univ., Univ. of Santa Clara (Calif.), The Univ. of the State of New York, Cornell Univ., Indiana Univ., A & T State Univ., Central State Univ., as well as the San Francisco Public Schools, Evangel College (Mo.), Baptist Bible Seminary, Johnson City, N. Y. Orders for this book have come from Australia, Japan, West Germany, Hong Kong, etc. And as a result of its favorable reception, orders for Volume II have been pouring in from all parts of the U.S. and of the world.

Throughout his life, Dr. Ferguson wasted no time in self-pity or becoming bitter. He was much too busy “creating” opportunities for himself where opportunities were denied him because of his race and color. He has led a most active, colorful, and productive life. His autobiography has a Horatio Alger flavor. It is beautifully written, with touches of humor enlivening the chronicle to make it a very readable, very interesting book, the kind of book readers find it extremely difficult to put down, once they have started reading it. College and university professors and librarians, high school teachers, professional men and women, parents, and other readers all agree that this autobiography is most stimulating and inspiring, for older as well as for younger people.

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I Dug Graves at Night to Attend College by Day (Volume III): Reflections: 50 Years of Life in America—Humor, Pathos, Rewards

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Lectures in Black Studies

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Ocee McRae, Texas

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Our Two Ocean Voyages: The Orient and Mediterranean—Morocco

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Which One of You is Interracial?: A Novelette & Other Stories

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