Author of Liberty’s Lifeline: Engaging the Grassroots Movement to Stop the Erosion of American Freedoms An engineer by trade, Bill O’Connell has long enjoyed a meaty conversation with both conservatives and liberals, and up until 2008, those conversations took place in private. But that all changed as the 2008 presidential elections drew near and he became more concerned about the loss of America’s personal liberties and runaway government spending. O’Connell is a long-time observer of government and politics and felt he could no longer sit on the sidelines watching today’s major crises happen without expressing his opinions and encouraging solutions – something he says the governing class has been light on. With this aim, O’Connell’s new book, Liberty’s Lifeline: Engaging the Grassroots Movement to Stop the Erosion of American Freedoms(Bridgeway Books, April 2011), asks readers tough questions and offers concrete steps to map out real change in Washington. Liberty’s Lifeline, which expands upon O’Connell’s popular political blog, LibertysLifeline.com, encourages Americans to realize that the preservation of liberties requires more than a vote every two or four years. He takes a hard look at today’s governmental policies, while avoiding name-calling, in order to point out the need for more citizen involvement in politics. O’Connell additionally contrasts the current political situation to the time of the Founding Fathers, tackling issues affecting Americans, from health-care reform to terrorism. “In order to restore America to the country of our Founding Fathers, Americans need to become politically educated and express their opinions every day,” says O’Connell, an active member of Tea Party365, a New York City branch of the Tea Party movement. A native New Yorker who grew up in the late 1950s and 1960s, O’Connell’s values were shaped by his parents, his Catholic faith and the movies and television shows of that era – with role models like John Wayne, Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone. He began his professional career in the late 1970s as a civil engineer in the nuclear power industry, and has since held several management positions in financial services and manufacturing, and a position as an adjunct professor at Pace University, teaching business telecommunications. O’Connell received a bachelor’s degree from Manhattan College in 1976, his Master of Business Administration from Fordham University in 1979 and a Master of Science in computer science from Pace University in 1987. He and his wife, Julie, have four children and live in Long Island, N.Y. For more information about Liberty’s Lifeline and to find out more about the blog that inspired the book, visit libertyslifeline.com.