Recommended Titles by Other Authors
Abu Ghraib: The Politics of Torture
Abu Ghraib unveiled a lengthy list of disastrous actions and cover-ups by the Bush administration and the American military. Abu Ghraib examines the problem from many different perspectives, gathering together timely essays on the prison scandal from prominent progressive writers. Barbara Ehrenreich looks at the story through the lens of feminism, noting that the most infamous photos involve female soldiers. John Gray argues that Iraq is worse than Vietnam. Looking to future ramifications, Meron Benvenisti reflects on the “powerless rage” of an occupied culture. David Matlin deconstructs President Bush’s declaration that the Abu Ghraib images do not represent America. Giving voice to those directly impacted, Mark Danner reports on the anger and humiliation experienced by the victims and their families. This book provides a broader understanding of the issue and its repercussions.
Al-Naqba (The Catastrophe): A Novel About the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict
Based on events, organizations, and locations that Barbara Goldscheider experienced while working on army bases throughout Israel, Al-Naqba, The Catastrophe follows the parallel stories of an elite Palestinian Arab and an officer of the Israeli Defense Forces. Asa Ibrahimi’s infatuation with the daughter of a desert sheikh is brutally ended when he’s arrested and beaten in the Russian Compound, two of his brothers are killed by Israeli soldiers, and his parents’ home in Ramallah is demolished. Israeli Colonel Neyri Ben-Ner attempts to begin a new life far from the instability of his country by going to Harvard and marrying an American woman. But a return to Israel brings him back to the horror of suicide bombings and mass murders. Both face a personal and political transformation with ramifications beyond their own lives. This epic novel blends drama, suspense, and romance, in the process tallying the tragedies to both parties in this seemingly unstoppable conflict.
Axial Stones: An Art of Precarious Balance
George Quasha’s extraordinary sculptures unite natural stones in a state of breathtakingly improbable balance. The stones are not altered physically or bonded in any way; rather, Quasha discovers an unknown axis that brings them into radical alignment. The stones “learn” this state of levity in contrast to their ordinary state of gravity, resulting in a new art form that feels alive with its own individual energy and personality. Here, 37 axial stones are displayed in dazzling full-page color photos. The accompanying text explains not only how the stones were found and eventually came together, but explores the aesthetic, philosophical, spiritual, and practical implications of an art of danger and impermanence. “Action pages” document the process—the repeated setting up, balancing, losing balance, and falling—until the full axial stone is born: a whole being greater and more real than the sum of its parts.
Book from the Sky
“I’m on my way back. I was one of the first they took away.” So begins Robert Kelly’s remarkable science fiction novel about a literally divided self. “I” is Billy, the book’s protagonist, a boy who is captured by a group of aliens who take him to a cave and meticulously, if seemingly by caprice, remove his “young pure smokeless lungs” and other internal organs to replace them with two gray squirrels, a live hawk, a shoe, and a variety of other bizarre objects. Billy’s body and mind are spun off into a curious twin, one whose adventures Billy is forced by his captors to watch and try to make sense of—not a simple task when he sees his doppelgänger stealing everything from him: body, name, family, his beloved Eileen. Complicating matters, and forcing Billy deeper into his ironic journey of self, is a mysterious pamphlet called “The Book from the Sky,” written by what may be yet another variation of Billy himself, Brother William. This stunningly imaginative work, echoing the late novels of Iris Murdoch and the fantasies of Robert Charles Wilson and Jonathan Stroud while remaining inimitably Kelly’s own, offers adventurous readers a “cabinet of wonders” not unlike the body of his beleaguered young hero.
Damanhur: Temples of Humankind
Nearly three decades ago, Italian spiritual leader Oberto Airaudi had a vision of sacred temples built inside a mountain near Turin. As artists, artisans, and builders excavated the equivalent of a five-story subterranean building, it remained a secret from even its closest neighbors. Twenty years after the project began, the Italian government received word of the burgeoning community and became suspicious. Threatened by a full-scale military invasion, Damanhur revealed itself to local officials and the world.
This handsome coffee-table book offers a guided tour of the village, whose stunning murals, sculpture, mosaics, and stained glass draw from all sacred traditions to celebrate universal spirituality. Merging ancient mystic customs and contemporary consciousness, intensive labor and visionary artistry, the story of this remarkable underground community appeals not only to spiritual seekers, but to artists and idealists from all disciplines.
Dreams are Wiser than Men
Edited by Richard A. Russo, this anthology of essays, poems, and short stories recounts dreams, analyzes dreams, and celebrates dreams. Dreams, like human experience, have intrinsic value apart from any interpretation we make of them. Instead of asking what dreams can do for us, ask how we may honor the dream.
Gravity Never Stops: The Life and Training of a Martial Artist
There may be no one in the world better at teaching martial arts to pre-teens and teenagers than Ron Sieh. Not just martial arts but values, heart, courage, a sense of humor, a way to turn bullying and teasing into reconciliation and fun. And that’s because he’s a big zen kid himself. Sieh is the antidote to Columbine and the dark Goth disembodied culture of so many of today’s youth. His message is: “do the form right because it is your form, kid, and no one else’s.”
Inside Star Vision: Planetary Awakening and Self-Transformation
Inside Star Vision is a landmark astrology book for the twenty-first century and centuries to come. It views human destiny and the life and death travels of individual souls as part of the larger journey undertaken by the universe itself in various modes of being and intelligence. Lonsdale not only leads us through signs, houses, and planets, but also interprets them in the context of broader archetypes and vision quests. He delineates the years 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, and 2006, and in a daring and profound act of spiritual writing, he sets the cosmic terms for the imminent transformation of humanity through an opening of the door between the two most separated realms of all, life and death.
Jellybeans
Dutch author/artist Sylvia van Ommen presents a delightfully—and deceptively—simple tale introducing a pair of friends whose favorite treat inspires some unexpectedly deep questions. George, a young rabbit, gets a message from his pal Oscar, a cat. “How about going to the park and eating jellybeans?” The two friends meet up and have a hilarious and surprisingly perceptive discussion about the existence of heaven, and what might or might not go on there, while nibbling on their favorite food. Funny, winsome, with a touch of Frog and Toad and a huge dollop of charm, this little book is an enchanting, provocative read.
Migraine Art: The Migraine Experience from Within
Migraine Art includes more than 300 powerful illustrations and paintings created by migraine sufferers from around the world. It provides a thoroughly unique window into the subjective world of the migraine sufferer. The idea of collecting migraine art started with a number of public competitions in the 1980s, which encouraged artists, both amateur and professional, to illustrate the pain, the visual disturbances, and the effect migraines had on their lives. The book includes hundreds of these submissions as well as detailed descriptions of different types of migraine visual phenomena.
Covering such topics as migraine signs, triggers, and treatments, as well as types of visual hallucinations and somatic sensations and experiences, the book offers a comprehensive view of the migraine experience. Each category of visual disturbance is accompanied by related artwork. A description of migraine visual experiences of famous historical figures, such as Blaise Pascal and Lewis Carroll, provide historical background on the topic. The book also includes a history of four Migraine Art competitions and information about the Migraine Art collection.
Oaktown Devil
On the streets, crime and violence are part of the daily routine, and revenge has taken the place of stickball. Staying straight isn’t easy, especially when one’s family is mixed up in gang wars and drug dealing. When Rainbow Jordan’s brother Stoney is murdered, he’s determined to find the killer—both to avenge his brother’s death and prove his own innocence in the murders that follow. Renay Jackson tells his characters’ stories in the voices of the streets: the drug lords and their victims; desperate young men and women whose only goal is a better lifestyle and more money despite the consequences; and those who are simply victims of a system that’s held them down their whole lives. More than just a page-turner, Oaktown Devil speaks for readers outside the mainstream and offers a voice for an overlooked population.
Panic: Origins, Insight, and Treatment
Panic is not a single state with only one set of feelings and predictable emotions. The essays and articles in this book span various disciplines—psychology, medicine, literature, and history—tied together by the common thread of panic, including how it is manifested in culture, tradition, and experience, and its differing treatments. Included are original as well as previously published writings by Peter A. Levine, Paul Pitchford, and Kim Newman.
Shakey’s Loose
In this blistering follow-up to Oaktown Devil, ambitious new players vie to control the complex and deadly Oakland drug scene. Big Ed takes over the East Side Empire. Shakey Jones, Buckey’s brother, is released from prison and his sole goal is to avenge the deaths of Buckey and his woman, Violet—deaths he thinks were caused by Rainbow’s betrayal. Shakey and Big Ed want the same turf, which sets up a rivalry whose endgame is predictable: a dizzying spiral of murder and revenge. Big Ed’s seizure of Vanessa, taken after he kills her man in front of her, turns sour when he realizes Vanessa is more than he bargained for. In Renay Jackson’s world, based on his observations of Oakland, California, the men are vicious, the women avaricious, and everyone steps on—or tries to kill—everyone else in the hopeless quest for power, prestige, money, and ultimately, love.
The Body in Psychotherapy
The Body in Psychotherapy explores the life of the body as a basis of psychological understanding. Its chapters describe the use of movement, awareness exercises, and bodily imagination in work with various populations and life situations. It chronicles somatic work with childhood trauma, political torture, and life transitions such as aging, the loss of parents, and the emergence of a sense of self.
The Body in Psychotherapy is the third in a groundbreaking series that provides a theoretical and practical context for the emerging field of Somatics. The first and second book of the series are Bone, Breath, and Gesture and Groundworks.
The Chakra System of Mount Desert Island
The Chakra System of Mount Desert Island takes the reader on a tour in which the actual hike or journey from locale to locale becomes a vision quest and operates on an internal as well as an external level. As we are led along the path of discovery, not only do we learn about the seven major chakras of Mount Desert, we are also taught how to discover chakras in every local, large and small. The traveler gets a chance actually to go to rocks and tiny bodies of water that have special power. He or she gets to look out from the hills and mountains across vast vistas and understand the energy of an entire system made up of islands, glacial moraine, a fjord (Somes Sound), and Cadillac Mountain itself. In a classic feng-shui mode Kaiser views the Mount Desert system of mountains, islands, kettle ponds, hillocks, etc., as a system of energy gates. Placing oneself in the correct alignment with these leads to insight and healing.
The Hierophant of 100th Street
The Hierophant of 100th Street is a rarity: a metaphysical novel set in a violent world of gangs, prisons, and the army. Drawing on the author’s experience of growing up in East Harlem in the 1960s, the story follows 17-year-old Adam Kadman and his 9-year-old brother John through their respective initiations into the hardscrabble life of the streets while simultaneously introducing real-life characters who dwell in the life of the spirit.
After drugs invade Spanish Harlem and a mafia goombah sets up shop with his mistress, the characters’ lives take dramatic turns with murders, betrayals, and poignant love affairs that end tragically. Adam is drafted, but never makes it to Vietnam, as he leads a soldier revolt and is then imprisoned and dishonorably discharged. He travels to Egypt, where in a harsh world of theocrats and misogynists he falls in love with a young Arab woman. Out of his element, he attacks the social structure—and ends up running for his life. Back in New York, John gets embroiled in gang warfare and lands in jail. By chance Adam is taken under the wing of “magus” Clifford Bias and discovers his own psychic abilities, entering his mentor’s secret society and a world of mysticism and love. Tapping the same rich spiritual vein as The Da Vinci Code and The Celestine Prophecy and written in the stark language of the streets, this daring, cinematic novel explores the ancient truths and heady mysteries hidden in the fabric of everyday life.
The Meaning of Lost and Mismatched Socks
Is there anything more mysterious—and frustrating—than the disappearance of a sock? Investigating this common phenomenon from a quasi-scientific perspective, Dr. Perditus Pedale postulates a number of explanations, with many theoretical, historical, and contemporary asides. Though written in jest, the book addresses a conundrum that genuinely puzzles many. Included are interviews with passersby, comments from other authorities, and delightful illustrations—all created by Dr. Pedale, the domestic naturalist.
Things Happen for a Reason: The True Story of an Itinerant Life in Baseball
Born in 1953 in Selma, Alabama, Terry Leach first plays baseball as a Little Leaguer. In college, he stars at Auburn until an arm injury threatens his future. He recovers sufficiently to pitch sidearm and enter the independent leagues in Louisiana, which leads to his major league career. For every Sosa, there are a dozen major-league players such as Leach. His professional pitching career began in 1976 with an independent minor-league team in Baton Rouge and ended in 1993 with Birmingham in the Triple AAA minors. In between, he pitched parts of 12 seasons in the majors, won 38 games, pitched almost 700 innings, and had a very respectable 3.37 earned run average. He was never a star, and every season of his career was a struggle to make a major-league roster. What dominates this book is Leach’s love for the game, its camaraderie, its history, and his small role within it. Guys turning down contracts for millions of dollars often say—and fans know better—”It’s not about the money.” It’s nice to know there are some players who can truthfully say that. Leach is such a player. This book relates his precarious experiences in baseball. His perspective is that of someone who was always fighting for the last roster spot on the team because he was never quite talented or young enough.
Westport Poems
A beloved, familiar figure known as “Jon the Walker” for his daily appearances traversing the marshes and waterways of various Connecticut towns, Jonathan Towers composed brief, emotionally evocative poems until his suicide in 2005 after years of struggle with mental illness. His work was fueled by reading and a rich inner life exploring the tarot, medieval history, courtly love and relationship, and the pre-Socratic philosophers. These poems beautifully evoke a sense of place, while also powerfully critiquing the forces of modern life that threaten it.
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