With James Christopher Pitts' debut literary offering, The Conscience Market, the reader is drawn into a journey through extremes. Visions of a paranoid and alarming world of modern conspiracies and opportunistic war mongering are held at balance with idealistic poetry celebrating humanity, love, and the arts. Pitts challenges many of our longest held traditions and prejudices with an uncanny knack for sarcasm, humor, and aggressive wit, at times assuming the role of an agitated, yet impassioned philosopher. Religion, political systems, extreme nationalism, and the apathy of the general population of the Western world are given no quarter, as these corrupt institutions are displayed in all of their hypocrisy in The Conscience Market.