The Prose of the Mountains contains three tales of the Caucasus by Aleksandre Qazbegi, one of the most prescient and gifted chroniclers of the Georgian encounter with colonial modernity. His stories offer an invaluable counterpoint to the predominantly Russian narratives that have hitherto shaped scholarly accounts of the nineteenth-century Caucasus. ?Memoirs of a Shepherd? poignantly chronicles the young author?s decision to pass seven years of his life as a shepherd with Georgian mountaineers. ?Eliso? (the name of a Chechen girl) offers one of the most searing accounts on record of the forced migration of this people from their homeland to Ottoman lands. Set in the sixteenth century, ?Khevis Beri Gocha? (the name of a Georgian village chief) classically chronicles a tragic misunderstanding between a severe father and his loving son.

The Prose of the Mountains contains three tales of the Caucasus by Aleksandre Qazbegi, one of the most prescient and gifted chroniclers of the Georgian encounter with colonial modernity. His stories offer an invaluable counterpoint to the predominantly Russian narratives that have hitherto shaped scholarly accounts of the nineteenth-century Caucasus. "Memoirs of a Shepherd" poignantly chronicles the young author's decision to pass seven years of his life as a shepherd with Georgian mountaineers. "Eliso" (the name of a Chechen girl) offers one of the most searing accounts on record of the forced migration of this people from their homeland to Ottoman lands. Set in the sixteenth century, "Khevis Beri Gocha" (the name of a Georgian village chief) classically chronicles a tragic misunderstanding between a severe father and his loving son.

When Dr Ben Givens left his Seattle home he never intended to return. It was to be a journey past snow-covered mountains to a place of canyons, sagelands and orchards, where, on the verges of the Columbia River, Ben had entered the world and would now take his leave of it.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Everybody tells you to live for a cause larger than yourself, but how exactly do you do it? The author of The Road to Character explores what it takes to lead a meaningful life in a self-centered world. “Deeply moving, frequently eloquent and extraordinarily incisive.”—The Washington Post Every so often, you meet people who radiate joy—who seem to know why they were put on this earth, who glow with a kind of inner light. Life, for these people, has often followed what we might think of as a two-mountain shape. They get out of school, they start a career, and they begin climbing the mountain they thought they were meant to climb. Their goals on this first mountain are the ones our culture endorses: to be a success, to make your mark, to experience personal happiness. But when they get to the top of that mountain, something happens. They look around and find the view . . . unsatisfying. They realize: This wasn’t my mountain after all. There’s another, bigger mountain out there that is actually my mountain. And so they embark on a new journey. On the second mountain, life moves from self-centered to other-centered. They want the things that are truly worth wanting, not the things other people tell them to want. They embrace a life of interdependence, not independence. They surrender to a life of commitment. In The Second Mountain, David Brooks explores the four commitments that define a life of meaning and purpose: to a spouse and family, to a vocation, to a philosophy or faith, and to a community. Our personal fulfillment depends on how well we choose and execute these commitments. Brooks looks at a range of people who have lived joyous, committed lives, and who have embraced the necessity and beauty of dependence. He gathers their wisdom on how to choose a partner, how to pick a vocation, how to live out a philosophy, and how we can begin to integrate our commitments into one overriding purpose. In short, this book is meant to help us all lead more meaningful lives. But it’s also a provocative social commentary. We live in a society, Brooks argues, that celebrates freedom, that tells us to be true to ourselves, at the expense of surrendering to a cause, rooting ourselves in a neighborhood, binding ourselves to others by social solidarity and love. We have taken individualism to the extreme—and in the process we have torn the social fabric in a thousand different ways. The path to repair is through making deeper commitments. In The Second Mountain, Brooks shows what can happen when we put commitment-making at the center of our lives.

Finalist, Lambda Literary Award In the beginning, there is no he. There is no she. Two cells make up one cell. This is the mathematics behind creation. One plus one makes one. Life begets life. We are the period to a sentence, the effect to a cause, always belonging to someone. We are never our own. This is why we are so lonely. She of the Mountains is a beautifully rendered illustrated novel by Vivek Shraya, the author of the Lambda Literary Award finalist God Loves Hair. Shraya weaves a passionate, contemporary love story between a man and his body, with a re-imagining of Hindu mythology. Both narratives explore the complexities of embodiment and the damaging effects that policing gender and sexuality can have on the human heart. Illustrations are by Raymond Biesinger, whose work has appeared in such publications as The New Yorker and the New York Times. Vivek Shraya is a multimedia artist, working in the mediums of music, performance, literature, and film. His most recent film, What I LOVE about Being QUEER, has been expanded to include an online project and book with contributions from around the world. He is also author of God Loves Hair. This publication meets the EPUB Accessibility requirements and it also meets the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG-AA). It is screen-reader friendly and is accessible to persons with disabilities. A Simple book with few images, which is defined with accessible structural markup. This book contains various accessibility features such as alternative text for images, table of contents, page-list, landmark, reading order and semantic structure.

Set in 1970s Japan, this tender and poetic novel about a young, single mother struggling to find her place in the world is an early triumph by a modern Japanese master. Alone at dawn, in the heat of midsummer, a young woman named Takiko Odaka departs on foot for the hospital to give birth to a baby boy. Her pregnancy, the result of a brief affair with a married man, is a source of sorrow and shame to her abusive parents. For Takiko, however, it is a cause for reverie. Her baby, she imagines, will be hers and hers alone, a challenge that she also hopes will free her. Takiko’s first year as a mother is filled with the intense bodily pleasures and pains that come from caring for a newborn. At first she seeks refuge in the company of other women—in the hospital, in her son’s nursery—but as the baby grows, her life becomes less circumscribed as she explores Tokyo, then ventures beyond the city into the countryside, toward a mountain that captures her imagination and desire for a wilder freedom.

“Elegiac, quirky, readable, deeply knowledgeable . . . The best cultural-historical introduction to that tempestuous land,” the Georgian republic. (Simon Sebag Montefiore, author of The Romanovs) Georgia has been called the world’s most beautiful country, yet little is known about it beyond its borders. This topical and vital book by Peter Nasmyth, the “ideal chronicler” (Literary Review) is the much-celebrated introduction to Georgia’s remarkable people, landscape, and culture. Over its 3,000-year-old history, Georgia has been ruled by everyone from the Greeks to the Ottomans, became a coveted part of the Russian Empire for a hundred years, and was incorporated into the Soviet Union in 1921. Since gaining independence in 1991, Georgia has undergone a dramatic socioeconomical and political transformation, and although its political situation remains precarious, Georgia’s strong sense of nationhood has reinvigorated the country. Vivid and comprehensive, Nasmyth’s Georgia: In the Mountains of Poetry is a unique eyewitness account of Georgia’s rebirth and creates an unforgettable portrait of its remarkable landscape, history, people and culture. Offering fascinating insights into the life of ordinary and high profile Georgians, it is essential reading for anyone who wants to know more of this astonishing place. “The best book on post-Soviet Georgia . . . Nasmyth is prepared to take risks―hanging out with mafiosi and walking through minefields to reach that part of western Georgia that has bloodily seceded . . . a riveting portrait . . . powerfully evocative.” —Independent “It would be difficult to read Nasmyth's quirky, entertaining, informative, sometimes surreal book without having an impulse to ring a travel agent and ask for flights to Tblisi.” —Literary Review