An uplifting story of enlightenment that reveals simple yet profound truths about our true nature, set amidst the atmospheric banks of the River Ganges that will appeal to both the self-help, non-duality, and "Eat, Pray, Love" travel markets. "No effort is necessary, Ray, no new knowledge required or acquired. No transcendental experience or higher consciousness needs to be achieved. When the recognition of what you are is seen - nothing at all happens. Why would it? You simply find yourself as you already are." It is widely thought that finding peace, happiness and freedom requires tremendous effort - that in order to achieve a state of contentment and harmony in life, a journey must be taken, or someone or something must be awakened or overcome. After a chance encounter with an Anglo-Indian holy man on the ghats of the sacred River Ganges, Ray Brooks discovers through the course of nine conversations that his quest for wholeness has been futile: no such journey was necessary, and, just like a shadow that seeks the sun, he had been searching for a self that had never been lost in the first place. After acknowledging that simple yet profound truth - that the seeker and that which is sought are one in the same - the search for "oneness" is complete. This book offers no systems of belief or promises. Instead, it clearly points to that which is ever-present yet completely overlooked: the ordinariness and beauty of our true nature.

A collection of essays by scientist Wade Davis that analyze the interactions between human societies and the natural world.

A moving portrait of Africa from Poland's most celebrated foreign correspondent - a masterpiece from a modern master. Famous for being in the wrong places at just the right times, Ryszard Kapuscinski arrived in Africa in 1957, at the beginning of the end of colonial rule - the "sometimes dramatic and painful, sometimes enjoyable and jubilant" rebirth of a continent. The Shadow of the Sun sums up the author's experiences ("the record of a 40-year marriage") in this place that became the central obsession of his remarkable career. From the hopeful years of independence through the bloody disintegration of places like Nigeria, Rwanda and Angola, Kapuscinski recounts great social and political changes through the prism of the ordinary African. He examines the rough-and-ready physical world and identifies the true geography of Africa: a little-understood spiritual universe, an African way of being. He looks also at Africa in the wake of two epoch-making changes: the arrival of AIDS and the definitive departure of the white man. Kapuscinski's rare humanity invests his subjects with a grandeur and a dignity unmatched by any other writer on the Third World, and his unique ability to discern the universal in the particular has never been more powerfully displayed than in this work.

An extraordinary epic, set a million years in the future, in the time of a dying sun, when our present culture is no longer even a memory. Severian, a torturer's apprentice, is exiled from his guild after falling in love with one of his prisoners. Ordered to the distant city of Thrax, armed with his ancient executioner's sword, Terminus Est, Severian must make his way across the perilous, ruined landscape of this far-future Urth. But is his finding of the mystical gem, the Claw of the Conciliator, merely an accident, or does Fate have a grander plans for Severian the torturer . . . ? This edition contains the first two volumes of this four volume novel, The Shadow of the Torturer and The Claw of the Conciliator.

Madeleine Clavell--beautiful, fiercely faithful, and...an outlaw. As Huguenots in 17th-Century France, Madeleine Clavell and her family defy French law daily. Though they live in comfort and happiness in the French countryside, their Protestant Christianity is considered traitorous. But they are wary. Persecution is surely at hand. Then King Louis XIV's dragoons arrive, forcing the family from their country estate. Madeleine must gather her courage and seek out the king in his royal palace at Versailles. Because Madeleine has a secret. Though years and a thousand choices have separated them, Madeleine and King Louis have a history together. One she feels certain he has not forgotten. She will risk everything to speak to him again. But will the impetuous king choose to save her...and her family? And if so, at what price?

"As a young, dissolute man, Ray Brooks set off from his native England and embarked on a path of self discovery. Through a series of serendipitous and often humorous events while living in Tokyo, Ray stumbled upon and began to study the ancient art of shakuhachi, and extremely difficult Japanese bamboo flute. With intuition as his guide, he found the heart of Zen through focused shakuhachi practice."--P. [4] of cover.

In 'Shadow Behind The Sun', Remzije Sherifi tells her own story, and that of her family, in the context of a deteriorating political environment that led over a number of years to the attempted ethnic cleansing of Kosova.