A brilliantly conceived novel imagining the little understood lives of Moses de León, the 13th-century Spanish kabbalist thought to have authored the Zohar, the central work of Jewish mysticism, and Carlos Castaneda, a 20th-century Peruvian anthropologist who claimed extraordinary experiences in the modern mystical classic, The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge. In this novel, Alpert matches their visions with his own conjurings of their inner lives. Dreams of strange figures; encounters with kabbalists and curanderos; and studies with unlikely spiritual guides, intertwine across traditions in uncanny ways. Praise for The Books of SplendorAn imaginative novel that hyperloops the interior lives of two of the most important authors of world mystical literature: 13th-century Castilian Rabbi Moses de Leon (Zohar) and 20th-century Peruvian and Californian Carlos Castaneda (Don Juan). In creative pre-histories we meet De Leon's adopted son, the Yanuka, and Castaneda's Cajamarcan mentor, a renegade Chabad Hasid who experiments with the entheogen ayahuasca. A fascinating literary doppelgänger, if not a soul-impregnation.- Menachem Kallus, author of Pillar of PrayerIf you want to learn the mysteries of Kabbalah in a delightful manner and, at the same time, be enthralled by an amazing tale, then this book is for you. Dive in! ... The author-composing this work pseudonymously, as did the authors of the Zohar-is an esteemed scholar of Jewish spirituality and a gifted writer.- Daniel Matt, author of The Essential Kabbalah, and translator of the multi-volume annotated, The Zohar: Pritzker Edition

A brilliantly conceived novel imagining the little understood lives of Moses de León, the 13th-century Spanish kabbalist thought to have authored the Zohar, the central work of Jewish mysticism, and Carlos Castaneda, a 20th-century Peruvian anthropologist who claimed extraordinary experiences in the modern mystical classic, The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge. In this novel, Alpert matches their visions with his own conjurings of their inner lives. Dreams of strange figures; encounters with kabbalists and curanderos; and studies with unlikely spiritual guides, intertwine across traditions in uncanny ways. Praise for The Books of SplendorAn imaginative novel that hyperloops the interior lives of two of the most important authors of world mystical literature: 13th-century Castilian Rabbi Moses de Leon (Zohar) and 20th-century Peruvian and Californian Carlos Castaneda (Don Juan). In creative pre-histories we meet De Leon's adopted son, the Yanuka, and Castaneda's Cajamarcan mentor, a renegade Chabad Hasid who experiments with the entheogen ayahuasca. A fascinating literary doppelgänger, if not a soul-impregnation.- Menachem Kallus, author of Pillar of PrayerIf you want to learn the mysteries of Kabbalah in a delightful manner and, at the same time, be enthralled by an amazing tale, then this book is for you. Dive in! ... The author-composing this work pseudonymously, as did the authors of the Zohar-is an esteemed scholar of Jewish spirituality and a gifted writer.- Daniel Matt, author of The Essential Kabbalah, and translator of the multi-volume annotated, The Zohar: Pritzker Edition

Born into an upper class family in Castile, Spain, Gonzalo de Yepes had good prospects - that is, until his father was ruined in a speculative venture. After his father died a pauper, Gonzalo was welcomed into the home of a rich uncle, who intended him to marry one of his younger daughters. The young man would have been set up for life, but he fell in love with Catalina Alvarez, the ward of a poor weaver, and insisted on marrying her despite his uncle's threats to cut him off from the family fortune. Thus, Gonzalo and Catalina were wed in simplicity, and their union produced three sons, the youngest of whom came to be known as Saint John of the Cross. Stories of saints do not often begin with their parents' courtship. But in this historical novel, love is at the very center of the drama, for Saint John of the Cross became one of the Church's foremost experts on intimacy with God. His mystical poems on divine love are considered some of the greatest verses ever written in the Spanish language. Richly drawn against the backdrop of Spain's Golden Age, the novel follows the joys and hardships experienced by the family of young Juan de Yepes Alvarez. His attraction to doing good for others, his call to the priesthood and his entrance into the Carmelites all unfold with captivating style. Testing Saint John to the utmost were his efforts, along with those of Saint Teresa of Avila, to reform the Carmelite Order. His Brothers in religion harshly resisted him, locking him in a cell where he was frequently beaten and nearly starved to death. In spite of all, this ardent and fascinating man would write: "Where there is no love, put love and you will gain love."

Human rights offer a vision of international justice that today’s idealistic millions hold dear. Yet the very concept on which the movement is based became familiar only a few decades ago when it profoundly reshaped our hopes for an improved humanity. In this pioneering book, Samuel Moyn elevates that extraordinary transformation to center stage and asks what it reveals about the ideal’s troubled present and uncertain future. For some, human rights stretch back to the dawn of Western civilization, the age of the American and French Revolutions, or the post–World War II moment when the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was framed. Revisiting these episodes in a dramatic tour of humanity’s moral history, The Last Utopia shows that it was in the decade after 1968 that human rights began to make sense to broad communities of people as the proper cause of justice. Across eastern and western Europe, as well as throughout the United States and Latin America, human rights crystallized in a few short years as social activism and political rhetoric moved it from the hallways of the United Nations to the global forefront. It was on the ruins of earlier political utopias, Moyn argues, that human rights achieved contemporary prominence. The morality of individual rights substituted for the soiled political dreams of revolutionary communism and nationalism as international law became an alternative to popular struggle and bloody violence. But as the ideal of human rights enters into rival political agendas, it requires more vigilance and scrutiny than when it became the watchword of our hopes.

'A towering achievement. There is simply nothing like it in the history of Black radical thought' Cornel West 'Cedric Robinson's brilliant analyses revealed new ways of thinking and acting' Angela Davis 'This work is about our people's struggle, the historical Black struggle' Any struggle must be fought on a people's own terms, argues Cedric Robinson's landmark account of Black radicalism. Marxism is a western construction, and therefore inadequate to describe the significance of Black communities as agents of change against 'racial capitalism'. Tracing the emergence of European radicalism, the history of Black African resistance and the influence of these on such key thinkers as W. E. B. Du Bois, C. L. R. James and Richard Wright, Black Marxism reclaims the story of a movement.

In a tumultuous era of Atlantic revolutions, a remarkable group of African-born and African-descended individuals transformed themselves from slaves into active agents of their lives and times. Through prodigious archival research, Landers alters our vision of the breadth and extent of the Age of Revolution, and our understanding of its actors.

A translation of the Kabbalah for the layperson includes a compact presentation of each primary text and features a practical analysis and vital historical information that offer insight into the various aspects of Jewish mysticism.