A Book Review Invitation, Maybe?

I need a good laugh every once in a while, and not just at the expense of kennie ham or the Discovery 'Institute'. Today I received an invitation to review a book, here's the basic invite:

"My name is Cheryl [XXXXX], Communications & PR Manager for David Birnbaum, author of the 3-book Summa Metaphysica series.
I am reaching out because I noticed you wrote an Amazon review for books similar in theme to ours.
Accordingly, we would like to invite you to review Summa I and/or Summa II and/or Summa III."

I don't know the lady, or the author, so I was curious how did they get my name and email. The invite had a little addition, looks like boilerplate to me:

"This is a highly intuitive work attempting to advance our speculative conjecture about the cosmos but fully comporting to our knowledge of the spectrum of various realities, across the sciences, both physical and social. The work is written within a Jewish context, but its motifs are universal. If the construct proposed herein proves to stand the test of time, mainstream Jewish philosophy and theology will comport to its contours and other belief systems will find ways to accommodate its assertions."

Ah, now it makes sense.  I have written a number of reviews on Amazon, for both books and various products.  I think it was my reviews of some of the DI's pseudo-science books that caught their attention.  I do find it funny that after the shellacking I gave those books, another theologically-bent publication would even think I would make a good reviewer.

However, there are two main reasons I will not be participating.  The first is this is not really a request for a review.  If it were the books would have been included.  Instead what the email contains was a link to purchase those three books from Amazon.  So this is less an invitation to review as it is a sales pitch.

I have reviewed a number of books for my profession and the request ALWAYS either included the book, or an agreement to perform an editorial review with a way of getting a copy of the book -- at no cost to myself.  So, no review.

The second reason is even simpler, time!  If I am going to spend my time reviewing something, it's not going to be something like this.  At least the DI tried to hide their theological leanings.

In addition, the email contained a number of images, most of which were hysterical.  Unlike the DI, the publisher of this particular religious tract bought an ad on the back over of several magazines.  Here's one of the images from the email:

Remember these were ads, not articles that would adhere to the publication standards of these magazines, but ads.  They also included an image the one from the back cover of Scientific-American (SA):

The small print says:

 "See full length article in HUFFINGTON POST | SCIENCE section"

Just because it appears on the back cover does not mean SA in any way endorses Birnbaum's publication, just that Birnbaum's publisher paid for the space to advertise.  Which is what tells me they are most likely trying to gain an legitimacy that that cannot get through other means, like actually publishing in a scientific journal.

Now, I don't know about you, but the Huffington Post is not a place I would go to for Science news.  This is a site that frequently includes articles by supporters of alternative medicine and anti-vaccine activists.

So what does all this mean?  Nothing much.  We have yet another religious publication trying to pass itself off as science by advertising in some science magazines.  Doesn't seem to be worth reading, let alone reviewing.