Religion

Sacred Mountains of the World (Revised)

Sacred Mountains of the World (Revised)

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From the Andes to the Himalayas, mountains have an extraordinary power to evoke a sense of the sacred. In the overwhelming wonder and awe that these dramatic features of the landscape awaken, people experience something of deeper significance that imbues their lives with meaning and vitality. Drawing on his extensive research and personal experience as a scholar and climber, Edwin Bernbaum's Sacred Mountains of the World takes the reader on a fascinating journey exploring the role of mountains in the mythologies, religions, history, literature, and art of cultures around the world. Bernbaum delves into the spiritual dimensions of mountaineering and the implications of sacred mountains for environmental and cultural preservation. This beautifully written, evocative book shows how the contemplation of sacred mountains can transform everyday life, even in cities far from the peaks themselves. Thoroughly revised and updated, this new edition considers additional sacred mountains, as well as the impacts of climate change on the sacredness of mountains.

Seeking Imperfection: Body Image, Marketing, and God

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Sensuous Spirituality: Out from Fundamentalism (Revised, Expanded)

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Sexual Violence: The Sin Revisited

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Stitches : A Handbook on Meaning, Hope and Repair

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The Blessing and the Curse

The Blessing and the Curse

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Following The People and the Books, which "covers more than 2,500 years of highly variegated Jewish cultural expression" (Robert Alter, New York Times Book Review), poet and literary critic Adam Kirsch now turns to the story of modern Jewish literature. From the vast emigration of Jews out of Eastern Europe to the Holocaust to the creation of Israel, the twentieth century transformed Jewish life. The same was true of Jewish writing: the novels, plays, poems, and memoirs of Jewish writers provided intimate access to new worlds of experience.

Kirsch surveys four themes that shaped the twentieth century in Jewish literature and culture: Europe, America, Israel, and the endeavor to reimagine Judaism as a modern faith. With discussions of major books by over thirty writers--ranging from Franz Kafka to Philip Roth, Elie Wiesel to Tony Kushner, Hannah Arendt to Judith Plaskow--he argues that literature offers a new way to think about what it means to be Jewish in the modern world. With a wide scope and diverse, original observations, Kirsch draws fascinating parallels between familiar writers and their less familiar counterparts. While everyone knows the diary of Anne Frank, for example, few outside of Israel have read the diary of Hannah Senesh. Kirsch sheds new light on the literature of the Holocaust through the work of Primo Levi, explores the emergence of America as a Jewish home through the stories of Bernard Malamud, and shows how Yehuda Amichai captured the paradoxes of Israeli identity.

An insightful and engaging work from "one of America's finest literary critics" (Wall Street Journal), The Blessing and the Curse brings the Jewish experience vividly to life.

The Dalai Lama

The Dalai Lama

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The first authoritative biography of the Dalai Lama--a story by turns inspiring and shocking--from an acclaimed Tibetan scholar with exceptional access to his subject.

The Dalai Lama's message of peace and compassion resonates with people of all faiths and none. Yet, for all his worldwide fame, he remains personally elusive. At last Alexander Norman--acclaimed Oxford-trained scholar of the history of Tibet--delivers the definitive, unique, unforgettable biography.

The Dalai Lama recounts an astonishing odyssey from isolated Tibetan village to worldwide standing as spiritual and political leader of one of the world's most profound and complex cultural traditions. Norman reveals that, while the Dalai Lama has never been comfortable with his political position, he has been a canny player--at one time CIA-backed--who has maneuvered amidst pervasive violence, including placing himself at the center of a dangerous Buddhist schism. Yet even more surprising than the political, Norman convinces, is the Dalai Lama's astonishing spiritual practice, rooted in magic, vision, and prophecy--details of which are illuminated in this book for the first time.

A revelatory life story of one of today's most radical, charismatic, and beloved world leaders.

The Phenomenon of Man

The Phenomenon of Man

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Pierre Teilhard De Chardin, one of the most distinguished thinkers and scientists of our time, fits into no familiar category for he was at once a biologist and a paleontologist of world renown and also a Jesuit priest.

He applied his whole life, his tremendous intellect, and his great spiritual faith to building a philosophy that would reconcile Christian theology with the scientific theory of evolution, to relate the facts of religious experience to those of natural science. The Phenomenon of Man is Pierre Teilhard's most important book and contains the quintessence of his thought.
UNBELIEVERS: AN EMOTIONAL HIST

UNBELIEVERS: AN EMOTIONAL HIST

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"How has unbelief come to dominate so many Western societies? The usual account invokes the advance of science and rational knowledge. Ryrie's alternative, in which emotions are the driving force, offers new and interesting insights into our past and present."--Charles Taylor, author of A Secular Age

The award-winning author of Protestants offers a new vision of the birth of the secular age, looking to the feelings of ordinary men and women--so often left out of the history of atheism.

Why have societies that were once overwhelmingly Christian become so secular? We think we know the answer, but in this lively and startlingly original reconsideration, Alec Ryrie argues that people embraced unbelief much as they have always chosen their worldviews: through their hearts more than their minds.

Looking back to the crisis of the Reformation and beyond, Unbelievers shows how, long before philosophers started to make the case for atheism, powerful cultural currents were challenging traditional faith. These tugged in different ways not only on celebrated thinkers such as Machiavelli, Montaigne, Hobbes, and Pascal, but on men and women at every level of society whose voices we hear through their diaries, letters, and court records.

Ryrie traces the roots of atheism born of anger, a sentiment familiar to anyone who has ever cursed a corrupt priest, and of doubt born of anxiety, as Christians discovered their faith was flimsier than they had believed. As the Reformation eroded time-honored certainties, Protestant radicals defended their faith by redefining it in terms of ethics. In the process they set in motion secularizing forces that soon became transformational. Unbelievers tells a powerful emotional history of doubt with potent lessons for our own angry and anxious age.

What's So Amazing about Polar Bears?: Teaching Kids to Care for Creation

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