This is a book for anyone who wants to live the good life, but who has not yet found a clear path to that goal. By examining the common threads that unite three, great spiritual traditions--Judaism, Buddhism, and Stoicism--the author provides a framework for achieving a fulfilled and ethically responsible life. The author helps the reader take the spiritual nutrients from these three ancient traditions and transform them into a life of beauty, order, and purpose. No scholarly expertise or special knowledge of religion is required to understand this book, nor need the reader believe in a supreme being or owe allegiance to a particular religion. All that's needed is an open mind and a sincere desire to create an awakened and flourishing life.

For nearly thirty years, readers seeking answers to fundamental questions about the nature of existence have turned to Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz's The Thirteen Petalled Rose. This contempory classic opens new vistas for understanding the relationship of G-d to man, and how moral human beings should conduct their lives. The Thirteen Petalled Rose addresses profound topics like Good and Evil, Divine Revelation, The Human Soul, Holiness, The Search for the Self and the Relatinship Between the Physical and Spiritual World. Rabbi Steinsaltz's vast knowledge of science, psychology, mysticism and philosophy come together in The Thirteen Petalled Rose, as he translates ancient Kabbalistic concepts into an intelligible language for a new generation of spiritual seekers.

Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction Finalist for the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography “An exhilarating romp through Orwell’s life and times and also through the life and times of roses.” —Margaret Atwood “A captivating account of Orwell as gardener, lover, parent, and endlessly curious thinker.” —Claire Messud, Harper's “Nobody who reads it will ever think of Nineteen Eighty-Four in quite the same way.” —Vogue A lush exploration of politics, roses, and pleasure, and a fresh take on George Orwell as an avid gardener whose political writing was grounded by his passion for the natural world “In the spring of 1936, a writer planted roses.” So be-gins Rebecca Solnit’s new book, a reflection on George Orwell’s passionate gardening and the way that his involvement with plants, particularly flowers, illuminates his other commitments as a writer and antifascist, and on the intertwined politics of nature and power. Sparked by her unexpected encounter with the roses he reportedly planted in 1936, Solnit’s account of this overlooked aspect of Orwell’s life journeys through his writing and his actions—from going deep into the coal mines of England, fighting in the Spanish Civil War, critiquing Stalin when much of the international left still supported him (and then critiquing that left) to his analysis of the relationship between lies and authoritarianism. Through Solnit’s celebrated ability to draw unexpected connections, readers are drawn onward from Orwell‘s own work as a writer and gardener to encounter photographer Tina Modotti’s roses and her politics, agriculture and illusion in the USSR of his time with forcing lemons to grow in impossibly cold conditions, Orwell’s slave-owning ancestors in Jamaica, Jamaica Kincaid’s examination of colonialism and imperialism in the flower garden, and the brutal rose industry in Colombia that supplies the American market. The book draws to a close with a rereading of Nineteen Eighty-Four that completes Solnit’s portrait of a more hopeful Orwell, as well as offering a meditation on pleasure, beauty, and joy as acts of resistance.