They were Midwesterners with Christian upbringing, involved in Buddhism and eastern culture at the tail end of the Beat generation. They had found their guru in San Francisco and were formally ordained as Buddhist monks. From 1977 to 1979 Heng Sure and Heng Chao undertook the ancient ascetic practice of bowing once every three steps on a two and a half year pilgrimage up the coast of California. They took with them only their faith and a wish for world peace as the inched their way along at about a mile and a half a day. Who gave them food? Where did they sleep? How did they diffuse the anger of drunks and overcome the hostility of law enforcement? What lessons did they learn in compassion and humility? And most important, what can we learn from their journey? Now 35th years after of the completion of their pilgrimage, the collection of letters they wrote during this time to their teacher Tripitaka Master Hsuan Hua, is republished as Highway Dharma Letters, a fascinating glimpse at their external journey up the coast and their internal journey towards transformation.

BIBLIOPHILIA: A perfectly acceptable addiction marked by obsessive reading, aggressive book-sniffing and strategic hoarding. For as long as Ferose, a San Francisco-based techie and 'gently mad' bibliophile, has understood books, he has devoured them with the unmitigated enthusiasm of a toddler on a sugar rush. For him, reading has been more than a weekend pursuit or a hobby on steroids. It has been a lifestyle - generously peppered with serendipitous first edition finds and deliberate in-store title hunting - of which he kept meticulous notes. In this intimate and refreshingly honest essay collection - illustrated by artists on the autism spectrum - Ferose professes his undying love for books and elaborates on his relationship with the life-affirming act of reading. Enthusiastically noting titles that carry scribbles in the neglected margins to gushing over one-of-a-kind collectibles, he delves into his varied picks, bringing his most formative bookish adventures to readers. Part memoir and part fascinating study of the quiet, fulfilling act of reading and collecting books, this joyous meld of anecdotes and recollections explores the sweeping genius of books and storytelling, and how they continually refine our collective conscience.

Letters from Bhikshus Heng Sure and Heng Chau to Venerable Master Hua written while on their bowing pilgrimage in 1977. During the 2 1/2 years pilgrimage the monks traveled from Los Angeles to the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas, Talmage, bowing once every three steps.

"Americans have treated the highway as sacred space," says Primeau (English, Central Michigan U.) introducing the rich tradition of prose and non-fiction road narratives that include On the Road, Grapes of Wrath, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, and the Journals of Lewis and Clark. Primeau critically examines these and other works from the position of travel as pilgrimage resulting in identifiable themes of protest, self discovery, picaresque parody, and myth making. Paper edition (unseen), $17.95. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

With the sweep of an epic novel, Michael Schumacher tells the story of Allen Ginsberg and his times, with fascinating portraits of Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady, and William Burroughs, among others, along with many rarely seen photographs.

HOW THE LITERATURE WE LOVE CONVEYS THE AWAKENING WE SEEK Suppose we could read Hemingway as haiku . . . learn mindfulness from Virginia Woolf and liberation from Frederick Douglass . . . see Dickinson and Whitman as buddhas of poetry, and Huck Finn and Gatsby as seekers of the infinite . . . discover enlightenment teachings in Macbeth, The Catcher in the Rye, Moby-Dick, and The Bluest Eye. Some of us were lucky enough to have one passionate, funny, inspiring English teacher who helped us fall in love with books. Add a lifetime of teaching Dharma — authentic, traditional approaches to meditation and awakening — and you get award-winning author Dean Sluyter. With droll humor and irreverent wisdom, he unpacks the Dharma of more than twenty major writers, from William Blake to Dr. Seuss, inspiring readers to deepen their own spiritual life and see literature in a fresh, new way: as a path of awakening.

A comprehensive collection of classic texts, contemporary interpretations, guidelines for activists, issue-specific information, and materials for environmentally-oriented religious practice. Sources and contributors include Basho, the Dalai Lama, Thich Nhat Hanh, Gary Snyder, Chögyam Trungpa, Gretel Ehrlich, Peter Mathiessen, Helen Tworkov (editor of Tricycle), and Philip Glass.