In No Beginning, No End, Zen master Jakusho Kwong-roshi shows us how to treasure the ordinary activities of our daily lives through an understanding of simple Buddhist practices and ideas. The author’s spontaneous, poetic, and pragmatic teachings—so reminiscent of his spiritual predecessor Shunryu Suzuki (Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind)—transport us on an exciting journey into the very heart of Zen and its meaningful traditions. Because Kwong-roshi can transmit the most intimate thing in the most accessible way, we learn how to ignite our own vitality, wisdom, and compassion and awaken a feeling of intimacy with the world. It is like having a conversation with our deepest and wisest self. Jakusho Kwong-roshi was originally inspired to study Zen because of zenga, the ancient art of Zen calligraphy. Throughout this book he combines examples of his own unique style of calligraphy, with less-known stories from the Zen tradition, personal anecdotes—including moving and humorous stories of his training with Suzuki-roshi—and his own lucid and inspiring teachings. All of this comes together to create an intimate expression of the enlightening world of Zen.

Swiss artist, architect, designer, typographer, and theorist Max Bill (1908 94) was one of the most important exponents of concrete and constructive art and a key figure in European applied arts and design history. Educated by such prominent teachers as Paul Klee, Wassily Kandisky, and Walter Gropius at the Bauhaus, at the start of his career in the 1930s. In the 1950s he teamed up with Inge Scholl and Otl Aicher to found the legendary Ulm College of Design in Ulm, Germany, of which he became the first director. In his work, Max Bill carried on the legacy of the Bauhaus, both as an artist and a teacher, and made a decisive and lasting contribution to twentieth-century cultural life. "Max Bill" accompanies an exhibition at the Museum MARTa Herford in Herford, Germany, held to mark the centenary of this exceptional artist. The exhibition displays Bill s wide-ranging work, and it also sets him in the context of his cultural milieu by featuring works by his contemporaries, such as Kurt Schwitters, Wassily Kandinsky, and Donald Judd. Accompanying essays investigate Bill s influence on other artists and the lasting importance of his oeuvre in the present."

This story is written as it happens, on the road. Digital technology and dot-com know-how are in harmony with minimalist living. The result is salt-of-the-earth drama related on the fly through an internet journal, culminating in a series of captivating true stories. A winning combination of integrity and know-how, with a relaxing informal prose, become informative nonfiction that reads like a novel. This first book progresses from the shedding of a traditional lifestyle to discoveries made on their bicycle journey from Arizona, USA to Panama City, Panama. On bicycle, the Travises are exposed to the ground level of society, an experience few outsiders will ever know. Along the way, the Travises witness a religious pilgrimage in Chalma, Mexico, visited ancient Aztec and Mayan ruins, were attacked by an airplane spraying pesticides in Guatemala and saw alligators, scarlet Macaws and three-toed sloths in the jungles and cloud forests of Costa Rica. You can check on their location, catch up on the latest news, and view stunning photographs from their global bicycle tour at their extensive web site: http://www.downtheroad.org.

Describes the latest events and trends in terrorism against the United States.

No End in Sight offers a critical analysis of Polish cinema and literature during the transformative late Socialist period of the 1970s and 1980s. Anna Krakus details how conceptions of time, permanence, and endings shaped major Polish artistic works. She further demonstrates how film and literature played a major role in shaping political consciousness during this highly-charged era. Despite being controlled by an authoritarian state and the doctrine of socialism, artists were able to portray the unsettled nature of the political and psychological climate of the period, and an undetermined future. In analyzing films by Andrzej Wajda, Krzysztof Kieslowsi, Krzysztof Zanussi, Wojciech Has, and Tadeusz Konwicki alongside Konwicki’s literary production, Anna Krakus identifies their shared penchant to defer or completely eschew narrative closure, whether in plot, theme, or style. Krakus calls this artistic tendency "aesthetic unfinalizability." As she reveals, aesthetic unfinalizability was far more than an occasional artistic preference or a passing trend; it was a radical counterpolitical act. The obsession with historical teleology saturated Polish public life during socialism to such a degree that instances of nonclosure or ambivalent endings emerged as polemical responses to official ideology.

"A ... chronicle of the reasons behind Iraq's descent into guerrilla war, warlord rule, criminality, and anarchy ... It features candid interviews with high-ranking officials ... as well as Iraqi civilians, American soldiers, intelligence officers, and prominent analysts... Together, these voices reveal the principal errors of U.S. policy -- using insufficient troop levels, allowing the looting of Baghdad, purging professionals from the Iraq government, and disbanding the Iraqi military -- errors that largely created the insurgency and chaos that engulf Iraq today. The book brings the movie up-to-date by evaluating the military's recent 'surge' tactic as well as current administration policy. It concludes with a wide-ranging debate on the crucial question: what do we do now?"--P. [4] of cover.