"Ignorant boys, killing each other," is just about all Nathan Coulter would tell his wife, friends, and family about the Battle of Okinawa in the spring of 1945. Life carried on for the community of
A singular life often circles around a singular moment, an occasion when one's life in the world is defined forever and the emotional vocabulary set. For the extraordinary writer James Salter, this m
The Heart Sutra is Buddhism in a nutshell. It has had the most profound and wide-reaching influence of any text in Buddhism. This short text covers more of the Buddha’s teachings than any other
Seeds of Wealth is a collection of elegant essays focusing on the economic and cultural consequences of the exploitation of timber, tobacco, rubber, and the wine grape. These cash crops have had, for
Inspired by the ancient Chinese proverb, “There’s nothing you can own that can’t be left out in the rain,” this collection charts the journeys of the poet from 1947 to 1985. T
For five decades Wendell Berry has been a poet of great clarity and purpose. He is an award-winning writer whose imagination is grounded by the pastures of his chosen place and the rooms and porches
In this masterpiece of travel literature, Robert Emmett Ginna travels on foot the 350 miles from one end of Ireland to the other. His walk is filled with encounters with remarkable citizens, as color
Lord Hugh Dowding, Air Chief Marshall of the Royal Air Force, Head of Fighter Command, First Baron of Bentley Priory, lived in the grip of unseen spirits. In thrall of the supernatural, he talked to
In 1948, twenty-one, already married and graduated from Princeton, W. S. Merwin made his first trip abroad. "Travel from America to Europe became a commonplace, an ordinary commodity, some time ago,
The continuing war in Iraq, Hurricane Katrina, the political sniping engendered by the Supreme Court nominations, Terry Schiavo — contemporary American society is characterized by divisive ange
The Morning Star is a refinement of the thoughts of a Zen Buddhist writer and teacher known for his clarity, compassion and insight. The introduction to this volume offers Robert Aitken's latest pres
Joe Jones is Anne Lamott's novel of the lives gathered around Jessie's Cafe, "a restaurant from another era, the sort of broken-down waterfront dive one might expect to find in Steinbeck or Saroyan."
A singular life often circles around a singular moment, an occasion when one's life in the world is defined forever and the emotional vocabulary is set. For James Salter, that moment was found in the
The Art of the Commonplace gathers twenty-one essays by Wendell Berry that offer an agrarian alternative to our dominant urban culture. These essays promote a clearly defined and compelling vision im
Zen Buddhism distinguishes itself by brilliant flashes of insight and its terseness of expression. The haiku verse form is a superb means of studying Zen modes of thought and expression, for its seve
Now comes David Markson's latest work, Vanishing Point, wherein an elderly writer (identified only as "Author") sets out to transform shoeboxes crammed with notecards into a novel - and in so doing d
Heathen Valley, Romulus Linney's haunting and original novel, was born from the church histories of the Valle Crucius mission in western North Carolina. Told in four parts, it is a story set in an al
When the Mona Lisa was stolen from the Louvre in 1911, it was over twenty-four hours before anyone noticed it was missing. Afterward, countless people flocked to see the empty space where it had once
Agrarian philosophy, a compelling worldview with advocates around the globe, encourages us to develop practices and policies that promote the sustainable health of the land, community, and culture. I
A personal and highly original take on the history of six commercial plants, Seeds of Change illuminates how sugar, tea, cotton, the potato, quinine, and the cocoa plant have shaped our past. In this
