“Exploring weakness and vulnerability from the origins of American literature to the present, she provocatively argues for ‘collateral resilience.’” —Viet Thanh Nguyen, Pulitzer Prize–winning author Vulnerability. We see it everywhere. In once permanent institutions. In runaway pandemics. In democracy itself. And most frighteningly, in ecosystems with no sustainable future. Against these large-scale hazards of climate change, what can literature teach us? This is the question Wai Chee Dimock asks in Weak Planet, proposing a way forward, inspired by works that survive through kinship with strangers and with the nonhuman world. Drawing on Native American studies, disability studies, and environmental humanities, Dimock shows how hope can be found not in heroic statements but in incremental and unspectacular teamwork. Reversing the usual focus on hegemonic institutions, she highlights instead incomplete gestures given an afterlife with the help of others. She looks at Louise Erdrich’s and Sherman Alexie’s user-amended captivity narratives; nontragic sequels to Moby-Dick by C. L. R. James, Frank Stella, and Amitav Ghosh; induced forms of Irishness in Henry James, Colm Tóibín, W. B. Yeats, and Gish Jen; and the experimentations afforded by a blurry Islam in works by Henri Matisse, James Joyce, Ezra Pound, and Langston Hughes. Celebrating literature’s durability as an assisted outcome, Weak Planet gives us new ways to think about our collective future. “Weak Planet invites us to reflect on the deep interconnections between two threatened extinctions: that of the humanities and that of a host of animal species (not least our own). The book is nothing short of a radical reorientation of literary history.” —Stephen Best, author of None Like Us: Blackness, Belonging, Aesthetic Life

Vulnerability. We see it everywhere. In once permanent institutions. In runaway pandemics. In democracy itself. And most frighteningly, in ecosystems with no sustainable future. Against these large-scale hazards of climate change, what can literature teach us? This is the question Wai Chee Dimock asks in Weak Planet, proposing a way forward, inspired by works that survive through kinship with strangers and with the nonhuman world. Drawing on Native American studies, disability studies, and environmental humanities, Dimock shows how hope can be found not in heroic statements but in incremental and unspectacular teamwork. Reversing the usual focus on hegemonic institutions, she highlights instead incomplete gestures given an afterlife with the help of others. She looks at Louise Erdrich’s and Sherman Alexie’s user-amended captivity narratives; nontragic sequels to Moby-Dick by C. L. R. James, Frank Stella, and Amitav Ghosh; induced forms of Irishness in Henry James, Colm Tóibín, W. B. Yeats, and Gish Jen; and the experimentations afforded by a blurry Islam in works by Henri Matisse, James Joyce, Ezra Pound, and Langston Hughes. Celebrating literature’s durability as an assisted outcome, Weak Planet gives us new ways to think about our collective future.

Astrology is both Science and Art. Hence only the talented can appreciate and understand it. Rightly Visnugupta declares that nobody other than a sage can master the ocean-like science of astrology. The great Varahamihira declares, No sin will creep into a place that is sanctified by the presence of a true astrologer. No person who studies and divines the course of destiny will ever be found in hell, but will reside permanently in the world of Brahman. This book brings to the fore not only the rationality of astrology but also the nature and structure of the correct knowledge that our forefathers possessed regarding the predictable influences of planets on human beings, and gives a spiritual bias to astrology. The reader is taken step by step in this work from the rudiments Viz., the distribution of constellations in the Zodiacal belt which is divided into twelve Signs, and the planetary hierarchy, through the method of calculating the ascendant and other houses of a natal chart, assessment of the strengths, influences, aspects, affliction, mutual relations etc., of the planets, to the final stage of reading the brighter and darker sides of the subject`s life, his chances of success and failure, their periods, ingress of the soul into the mortal coil and exit thereform as well as its departure to other worlds according to its karma. In this book an attempt has been made to give a good account of the science of astrology, with a view to making the reader a good and true astrologer. It also shows that astrology does not make man a fatalist, a helpless automation in the hands of a merciless Fate. It should, on the other hand, help him to take to self-exertion and self-help. This hoary lore, according to the author, is to be practised not for selfish ends, but to guide the needy and the distressed, to remove the cause of their suffering and to turn their attention towards God. Contents Preface to the First Edition, Preface to the Third Edition, 1. General Principles, 2. Planets' Characteristics, 3. Lagna and other Houses, 4. Planetary Strength, 5. Moon's States and Constellations, 6. Rectification of Birth time, 7. Span of Life, 8. Rasi Effects, 9. On Bhavas, 10. Conception and Birth, 11. Ududasas, 12. Yogas, 13. Rajayogas, 14. Issue, 15. Matrimony, 16. Female Horoscopy, 17. Disease, 18. Description of Decanates, 19. Death, 20. Profession, 21. Transits, 22. Astakavarga, Appendix, Index.