For as long as stories have been told, we’ve had a peculiar fascination with the wayward among us, with those we call the fools. Our histories are flush with those who stand at the edge of reason, of those who see what others cannot. Among the archetypes, the Greater Fool holds a most special place within the canon. Standing there unphased after the dust and the punchlines settle, the Greater Fool is the one who hangs on when all others let go, the one who turns into the storm when all common sense and foot traffic points the other way. Where the world around them sees only an empty promise, the Greater Fool maintains there is yet worth to be discovered still. Intrepid and unwitting as they may be, they’re also the ones we need. As irony would have it, in every Greater Fool there’s just enough magic to pull us back in their direction. Just enough light for truth to shine an arc of redemption. This is the story of Brad Gobright, one such anomaly who shined for us all a most special and unending light.

Taigu Ryokan (1759-1831) remains one of the most popular figures in Japanese Buddhist history. Despite his religious and artistic sophistication, Ryokan referred to himself as "Great Fool" and refused to place himself within the cultural elite of his age. In contrast to the typical Zen master of his time, who presided over a large monastery, trained students, and produced recondite religious treatises, Ryokan followed a life of mendicancy in the countryside. Instead of delivering sermons, he expressed himself through kanshi (poems composed in classical Chinese) and waka and could typically be found playing with the village children in the course of his daily rounds of begging. Great Fool is the first study in a Western language to offer a comprehensive picture of the legendary poet-monk and his oeuvre. It includes not only an extensive collection of the master's kanshi, topically arranged to facilitate an appreciation of Ryokan's colorful world, but selections of his waka, essays, and letters. The volume also presents for the first time in English the Ryokan zenji kiwa (Curious Accounts of the Zen Master Ryokan), a firsthand source composed by a former student less than sixteen years after Ryokan's death. Although it lacks chronological order, the Curious Account is invaluable for showing how Ryokan was understood and remembered by his contemporaries. It consists of colorful anecdotes and episodes, sketches from Ryokan's everyday life. To further assist the reader, three introductory essays approach Ryokan from the diverse perspectives of his personal history and literary work.

A young couple in Toronto starts house-hunting with a $450,000 budget and ends up with a $700,000 home, after losing fifteen bidding wars. In Vancouver the average bungalow soars past $900,000. In Saskatoon, house values rock higher 56 per cent in one year. At the same time, real estate values in the US plunge for the first time since the Great Depression. Millions of families are forced out of their homes. Canadians are told it can't happen here, while first-time buyers outside Toronto sign up for monster houses with virtually no down payment and 40-year mortgages for 98 per cent of the cost. When the average family can no longer afford the average home, how can so many people be deluded into believing a boom will last forever'when none has before? How could we have put so much money into something we might never be able to sell, except to a greater fool? Truth is, homeowners and homebuyers have been seduced by a cabal made up of real estate marketers, builders, lenders and bankers, along with a pliant media, to buy, buy, buy. Canada has its own, hidden debt crisis just as dire as the subprime mortgage fiasco, and the same self-dealing industry tactics have led us to put more than 80 per cent of our net worth into a single asset, ignoring the obvious threats and repeating the disastrous mistakes of others. Are we next? Yes.

The British comedian recounts the highs and lows of his wild years: “A gifted writer with a perfect sense of comic timing and anecdote-spinning . . . Lots of fun.” —Kirkus Reviews By his early thirties, Stephen Fry—writer, comedian, star of stage and screen—had, as they say, “made it.” Much loved on British television, author of a critically acclaimed and bestselling first novel, with a glamorous and glittering cast of friends, he had more work than was perhaps good for him. As the ‘80s drew to a close, he began to burn the candle at both ends. Writing and recording by day, and haunting a never-ending series of celebrity parties, drinking dens, and poker games by night, he was a high functioning addict. He was so busy, so distracted by the high life, that he could hardly see the inevitable, headlong tumble that must surely follow . . . Filled with raw, electric extracts from his diaries of the time, More Fool Me is a brilliant, eloquent account by a man driven to create and to entertain—revealing a side to him he has long kept hidden. “Fry is an astonishingly charming fellow: erudite, playful and capable of writing in a style so intimate that readers can picture themselves sitting next to him at a splendid dinner party as he rather one-sidedly entertains the entire table.” —Slate

The seventh daughter of the Sea King, Ekaterina is more than a pampered princess-she's also the family spy. Which makes her the perfect emissary to check out interesting happenings in the neighboring kingdom…and nothing interests her more than Sasha, the seventh son of the king of Belrus. Ekaterina suspects he's far from the fool people think him. But before she can find out what lies beneath his facade, she is kidnapped! Trapped in a castle at the mercy of a possessive Jinn, Ekaterina knows her chances of being found are slim. Now fortune, a fool and a paper bird are the only things she can count on-along with her own clever mind and intrepid heart.…

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