Yoga, karma, meditation, guru—these terms, once obscure, are now a part of the American lexicon. Combining Hinduism with Western concepts and values, a new hybrid form of religion has developed in the United States over the past century. In Transcendent in America, Lola Williamson traces the history of various Hindu-inspired movements in America, and argues that together they constitute a discrete category of religious practice, a distinct and identifiable form of new religion. Williamson provides an overview of the emergence of these movements through examining exchanges between Indian Hindus and American intellectuals such as Thomas Jefferson and Ralph Waldo Emerson, and illuminates how Protestant traditions of inner experience paved the way for Hindu-style movements’ acceptance in the West. Williamson focuses on three movements—Self-Realization Fellowship, Transcendental Meditation, and Siddha Yoga—as representative of the larger of phenomenon of Hindu-inspired meditation movements. She provides a window into the beliefs and practices of followers of these movements by offering concrete examples from their words and experiences that shed light on their world view, lifestyle, and relationship with their gurus. Drawing on scholarly research, numerous interviews, and decades of personal experience with Hindu-style practices, Williamson makes a convincing case that Hindu-inspired meditation movements are distinct from both immigrant Hinduism and other forms of Asian-influenced or “New Age” groups.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Yaa Gyasi's stunning follow-up to her acclaimed novel Homegoing is "a book of blazing brilliance" (The Washington Post)—a powerful, raw, intimate, deeply layered novel about a Ghanaian family in Alabama. A TODAY SHOW #ReadWithJenna BOOK CLUB PICK! • Finalist for the WOMEN'S PRIZE Gifty is a sixth-year PhD candidate in neuroscience at the Stanford University School of Medicine studying reward-seeking behavior in mice and the neural circuits of depression and addiction. Her brother, Nana, was a gifted high school athlete who died of a heroin overdose after an ankle injury left him hooked on OxyContin. Her suicidal mother is living in her bed. Gifty is determined to discover the scientific basis for the suffering she sees all around her. But even as she turns to the hard sciences to unlock the mystery of her family's loss, she finds herself hungering for her childhood faith and grappling with the evangelical church in which she was raised, whose promise of salvation remains as tantalizing as it is elusive.

In the tradition of Guns, Germs, and Steel and Sapiens, a winner of the Royal Society Prize for Science Books shows how four tools enabled has us humans to control the destiny of our species "A wondrous, visionary work." --Tim Flannery, scientist and author of the bestselling The Weather Makers What enabled us to go from simple stone tools to smartphones? How did bands of hunter-gatherers evolve into multinational empires? Readers of Sapiens will say a cognitive revolution -- a dramatic evolutionary change that altered our brains, turning primitive humans into modern ones -- caused a cultural explosion. In Transcendence, Gaia Vince argues instead that modern humans are the product of a nuanced coevolution of our genes, environment, and culture that goes back into deep time. She explains how, through four key elements -- fire, language, beauty, and time -- our species diverged from the evolutionary path of all other animals, unleashing a compounding process that launched us into the Space Age and beyond. Provocative and poetic, Transcendence shows how a primate took dominion over nature and turned itself into something marvelous.

“Phenomenal . . . A must read for us who desire to topple the dictatorship of relativism and culture of death and replace it with the only alternative” (The Imaginative Conservative). Especially concerned with the public nature of religion, historian Glenn W. Olsen—author of Christian Marriage: A Historical Study and On the Road to Emmaus: The Catholic Dialogue with American and Modernity—sets forth an exhaustively researched and persuasive account of how religion has been reshaped in the modern period. The Turn to Transcendence traces both the loss of transcendence and attempts to recover it while making its own proposals. Neither reactionary nor modernist, it questions how—under conditions of modern life—some form of the sacred and some form of the secular might both flourish at the same time. But it also provides a warning that a religion unable to maintain itself with its own overt architecture, language, and calendars against an enveloping secular culture is destined for oblivion. “Glenn Olsen’s book could hardly be more pivotal or insightful. Confronting the growing amnesia regarding culture’s religious origin and transcendent purpose, Olsen proves both a masterful cartographer of modernity and a visionary of a culture that encourages and enables us to seek beyond ourselves.” —Carl A. Anderson, Supreme Knight of the Knights of Columbus “A brilliant book. It rests on an amazing amount of scholarship that is wide-ranging in history, literature, art, science, music, theology, and philosophy.” —James Hitchcock, professor of history, St. Louis University

Transcendence is the long-awaited, career-spanning monograph of American landscape painter Richard Mayhew. For over half a century, Richard Mayhew has been reinventing the genre of landscape painting. His luminous work evokes not only physical vistas but also emotions, sounds, and the pure experience of color. He's known for his masterful use of color and for his unique creative process, inspired by improvisational jazz, which involves pouring paint directly onto the canvas and shaping it into lush, emotional "moodscapes." • This monograph features 70+ of his most striking works. • Includes an exclusive interview with the artist, an introduction by his gallerist Mikaela Sardo Lamarche, and an essay by Andrew Walker, director of the Amon Carter Museum of American Art • Through engaging with his work, readers are invited into deep explorations of their own inner landscapes. Transcendence is a richly rewarding celebration of an iconic artist that will make you rethink everything you know about landscape painting. Mayhew's distinctive style emerges from his roots as a jazz musician, his immersion in the Abstract Expressionist movement, his African American, Cherokee, and Shinnecock heritage, and his unique affinity for the landscapes of the American West—but his paintings transcend boundaries of location and identity. • Great for lovers of fine art, landscape painting, Abstract Expressionism, as well as those who are interested in the intersection of art, music, and emotion • A lush celebration of Richard Mayhew's work, and an ideal introductory book for new fans • Add it to the collection of books like Abstract Expressionism by Carter Ratcliff, Jeremy Lewison, Susan Davidson, and David Anfam; California Landscapes: Richard Diebenkorn / Wayne Thiebaud by John Yau; and The Art of Richard Mayhew: A Critical Analysis with Interviews by Janet Berry Hess.

An artist's book guide to the world of sound from musician and sonic healer Lavender Suarez.

A timely work of contemporary magical realism, about a world plagued by violence, and the girl called upon to be a hero. When terrorists bomb Disney World, seventeen-year-old Iris Spero is as horrified as anyone else. Then a stranger shows up on her stoop in Brooklyn, revealing a secret about the mysterious circumstances surrounding Iris’s birth, and throwing her entire identity into question. Everything she thought she knew about her parents, and about herself, is a lie. Suddenly, the press is confronting Iris with the wild notion that she might be “special.” More than just special: she could be the miracle the world now so desperately needs. Families all across the grieving nation are pinning their hopes on Iris like she is some kind of saint or savior. She’s no longer sure whom she can trust—except for Zane, a homeless boy who long ago abandoned any kind of hope. She knows she can’t possibly be the glorified person everyone wants her to be… but she also can’t go back to being safe and anonymous. When nobody knows her but they all want a piece of her, who is Iris Spero now? And how can she—one teenage girl—possibly heal a broken world?