Unsinkable Sam: A Children’s Storybook

by Joshua Stephens

“Unsinkable Sam” is a gentle, picture-book tale about a brave tuxedo cat who survives three shipwrecks, each time rescued by kind sailors. Sam makes friends on every ship, earns the nickname “Unsinkable,” and eventually retires to a cozy home by the sea. It’s a story of courage, luck, and kindness that shows how even a small hero can make big waves.

Kindle Edition

Published October 11, 2025

About the author

Joshua Stephens was first shoved down a flight of stairs as a teenager, during the 1991 Gulf War. Radicalized by stand-up comedy and punk rock, he’d made quick enemies of classmates on a US base in the Mediterranean, whose parents forged careers in the bombing of Iraq. An apparent glutton for punishment, he pursued similar treatment (typically in street protests) at the hands of the Uniformed Secret Service, various police agencies, under FBI surveillance, and in sundry states of seclusion and undress with agents at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion airport. None of which deterred congressional staffers, IMF employees, investment bankers, or corporate lawyers from giving him keys to their homes in Washington, DC and New York, from 2001-2012, when he worked as a professional dogwalker.

His writing since has appeared in The Atlantic, Gawker, AlterNet, Truthout, NOW Lebanon, and The Baltimore Indy Reader, as well as the journals The Outpost, Upping the Anti, and Perspectives on Anarchist Theory.