Literary Nonfiction. California Interest. Religion & Spirituality. Originally published in recurring dispatches for a small town newspaper, this collection of essays by noted California naturalist Richard Vacha reads like a delighted field journal, full of insights into the mystic, sensory, and nearly-forgotten world of animal tracking. Through a series of outings, Vacha traverses the prismatic experience of tracking and brings it to our level. Practical investigations of signs and tracks draw close to the lives of all the animals in his landscape, including bobcats, badgers, skunks, coyotes, and one particular vulture. With spontaneous energy, Vacha's essays reveal the practice of asking sacred questions, and the process of stripping down to your senses in order to enter this primal awareness.

The life of Bodhidharma, the founder of Zen Buddhism, has, with the passing of time, been magnified to the scale of myth, turning history into the stuff of legend. Known as the First Patriarch, Bodhidharma brought Zen from South India into China in 500 CE, changing the country forever. In Tracking Bodhidharma, Andrew Ferguson recreates the path of Bodhidharma, traveling through China to the places where the First Patriarch lived and taught. This sacred trail takes Ferguson deep into ancient China, and allows him to explore the origins of Chan [Zen] Buddhism, the cultural aftermath that Bodhidharma left in his wake, and the stories of a man who shaped a civilization. Tracking Bodhidharma offers a previously unheard perspective on the life of Zen's most important religious leader, while simultaneously showing how that history is relevant to the rapidly developing super–power that is present–day China. By placing Zen Buddhism within the country's political landscape, Ferguson presents the religion as a counterpoint to other Buddhist sects, a catalyst for some of the most revolutionary moments in China's history, and as the ancient spiritual core of a country that is every day becoming more an emblem of the modern era.

Are You Looking To Achieve Peak Physical Fitness? Discover How To Improve Your Health With Fitness Tracking Technology Today! Technological advancement has given rise to many smart applications that not only improve efficiency but also make tracking and monitoring of different activities easier. It's always important to monitor your progress as far as your health and fitness regimen is concerned. A fitness tracker is therefore that application or device used in tracking and monitoring fitness goals. It measures metrics such as distance run or walked, rate of heartbeat, calories consumed and sometimes even the quality of your sleep. Most of these tracking devices are wirelessly synchronized to a smartphone or computer for the purposes of regular data tracking and reporting. In many cases, people have fitness goals or targets, whether monthly or on a daily basis, that they hope to achieve. Monitoring the progress of your fitness regimen can be a challenge especially if you are not a certified fitness trainer or health practitioner. Fitness tracking devices give you the capability to monitor your progress and determine how far you are from meeting your targets, or if indeed you achieved or exceeded them. Most of them are wearable and can also serve as regular digital watches. Some people wear them as accessories because of their fashion forward designs. These devices have become so main stream that some firms have decided to use them in encouraging consumers to live healthily. The electronic fitness trackers are basically an advanced version of pedometers. Apart from counting steps, they also use accelerometers to determine distance covered, graph general physical activity and calculate calorie usage. In some cases they also keep track of and graph quality of sleep and heart rate.

Selected by the American School Board Journal as a “Must Read” book when it was first published and named one of 60 “Books of the Century” by the University of South Carolina Museum of Education for its influence on American education, this provocative, carefully documented work shows how tracking—the system of grouping students for instruction on the basis of ability—reflects the class and racial inequalities of American society and helps to perpetuate them. For this new edition, Jeannie Oakes has added a new Preface and a new final chapter in which she discusses the “tracking wars” of the last twenty years, wars in which Keeping Track has played a central role. From reviews of the first edition:“Should be read by anyone who wishes to improve schools.”—M. Donald Thomas, American School Board Journal“[This] engaging [book] . . . has had an influence on educational thought and policy that few works of social science ever achieve.”—Tom Loveless in The Tracking Wars“Should be read by teachers, administrators, school board members, and parents.”—Georgia Lewis, Childhood Education“Valuable. . . . No one interested in the topic can afford not to attend to it.”—Kenneth A. Strike, Teachers College Record

As a sports and wellness medicine practitioner whose clients include Olympic and professional athletes, triathletes, and weekend warriors, Dr. Naresh Rao has uncovered the secrets of how and why elite athletes consistently perform at the highest levels. In Step Up Your Game, he reveals what separates the best athletes from the rest of us, despite our best efforts in any chosen sport. According to Rao, top athletes know that peak performance requires much more than consistent practice. He reveals a comprehensive program that takes into account every aspect of optimizing wellness—from monitoring health to improving nutrition, following a thorough training protocol, and developing a plan for recovering from and preventing injury. The mental game is just as important as the physical one; these athletes make sure to address their motivational, psychological, and spiritual needs, too. In short, the athletes who are at the top of their game know that if they want to improve—whether it’s their accuracy at the goal, time at the finish line, or consistency of play—they need to take each of these aspects into consideration every single day. Step Up Your Game reveals how remarkable success is available to athletes with the conviction and desire to improve. By integrating Dr. Rao’s program into an existing fitness routine, readers will take ownership of their training in a systematic way, remove the stress that often hampers outcomes, and—most importantly—begin to fully enjoy their exercise experience as they work to achieve their healthiest selves. Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Sports Publishing imprint, is proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in sports—books about baseball, pro football, college football, pro and college basketball, hockey, or soccer, we have a book about your sport or your team. In addition to books on popular team sports, we also publish books for a wide variety of athletes and sports enthusiasts, including books on running, cycling, horseback riding, swimming, tennis, martial arts, golf, camping, hiking, aviation, boating, and so much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to publishing books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked by other publishers and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.