Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

The peoples of Asia now make up more than half of the world's population. They are increasingly well-educated, and successful in every area of modern trade and technology. Their influence in the rest of the world is also becoming greater. Colin Mason provides a readable and clear introduction to their history and traditions, from prehistory right up to the present day. This thoroughly revised, updated and expanded... (more)

The Jesus sutras : rediscovering the lost scrolls of Taoist Christianity

The Jesus sutras : rediscovering the lost scrolls of Taoist Christianity

by Martin Palmer

“The Jesus Sutras tells a valuable history of the beautiful teachings of a faith built on living practices of brotherhood and peace. The Sutras show us the interbeing nature of Jesus, Buddha, Tao, peoples, cultures, transformation, salvation and unity through deep and mindful living.” --Thich Nhat Hanh, author of LIVING BUDDHA, LIVING CHRIST "In offering a tantalizing glimpse of a distant past when... (more)

Restoration London : from poverty to pets, from medicine to magic, from slang to sex, from wallpaper to women's rights

Restoration London : from poverty to pets, from medicine to magic, from slang to sex, from wallpaper to women's rights

by Liza Picard

Picard, a former barrister, attempts to provide not a history but a description of how people lived in London in the decade (1660-1670) following the restoration of the Stuarts. Parceled among four broad thematic sections, like "The Urban Environment" and "The Human Condition," are self-contained chapters on such subjects as gardens, parks and public spaces; housework, laundry and shopping. Each is subsequently... (more)

Guns, Germs, and Steel

The Fates of Human Societies

by Jared Diamond

With a new chapter. The phenomenal bestseller—over 1.5 million copies sold—is now a major PBS special. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Guns, Germs, and Steel is a brilliant work answering the question of why the peoples of certain continents succeeded in invading other continents and conquering or displacing their peoples. This edition includes a new chapter on Japan and all-new illustrations drawn from the... (more)

The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness (Armstrong, Karen)

The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness (Armstrong, Karen)

by Karen Armstrong

In 1962, at age seventeen, Karen Armstrong entered a convent, eager to meet God. After seven brutally unhappy years as a nun, she left her order to pursue English literature at Oxford. But convent life had profoundly altered her, and coping with the outside world and her expiring faith proved to be excruciating. Her deep solitude and a terrifying illness–diagnosed only years later as epilepsy–marked her forever as... (more)

I'm a Stranger Here Myself

Notes on Returning to America After Twenty Years Away

by Bill Bryson

After living in Britain for two decades, Bill Bryson recently moved back to the United States with his English wife and four children (he had read somewhere that nearly 3 million Americans believed they had been abducted by aliens--as he later put it, "it was clear my people needed me"). They were greeted by a new and improved America that boasts microwave pancakes, twenty-four-hour dental-floss hotlines, and the... (more)

C. S. Lewis at the Bbc: Messages of Hope in the Darkness of War

C. S. Lewis at the Bbc: Messages of Hope in the Darkness of War

by Justin Phillips

A behind-the-scenes look at religious radio broadcasting during World War II in which such revered figures as C.S. Lewis and Dorothy Sayers came into the public eye. This fascinating book explores the tensions behind the greatest era in BBC radio broadcasting -- the Home Service. Despite evacuation, air-raids and the closure of the fledgling TV service, the BBC rose magnificently to the challenge of informing,... (more)

The Marriage of Sense and Soul: Integrating Science and Religion

The Marriage of Sense and Soul: Integrating Science and Religion

by Ken Wilber

Acclaimed author and spiritual leader Ken Wilber points the way to a realistic path of understanding between science and religion, unbridled by romanticism or idealism.

How to Be Alone: Essays

by Jonathan Franzen

From the National Book Award-winning author of The Corrections , a collection of essays that reveal him to be one of our sharpest, toughest, and most entertaining social critics While the essays in this collection range in subject matter from the sex-advice industry to the way a supermax prison works, each one wrestles with the essential themes of Franzen's writing: the erosion of civil life and private... (more)

Warrior Politics: Why Leadership Demands a Pagan Ethos

Warrior Politics: Why Leadership Demands a Pagan Ethos

by Robert D. Kaplan

In Warrior Politics , the esteemed journalist and analyst Robert D. Kaplan explores the wisdom of the ages for answers for today’s leaders. While the modern world may seem more complex and dangerous than ever before, Kaplan writes from a deeper historical perspective to reveal how little things actually change. Indeed, as Kaplan shows us, we can look to history’s most influential thinkers, who would have... (more)

The Global Soul: Jet Lag, Shopping Malls, and the Search for Home (Vintage Departures)

The Global Soul: Jet Lag, Shopping Malls, and the Search for Home (Vintage Departures)

by Pico Iyer

From the acclaimed author of Video Nights in Kathmandu comes this intriguing new book that deciphers the cultural ramifications of globalization and the rising tide of worldwide displacement. Beginning in Los Angeles International Airport, where town life?shops, services, sociability?is available without a town, Pico Iyer takes us on a tour of the transnational village our world has become. From Hong Kong, where... (more)

The Chinese

by Jasper Becker

In The Chinese, Jasper Becker, China's premier western correspondent, strips the country of its myths and captures the Chinese as they really live. For nearly two decades Becker has lived in China, and reported from areas where most visitors do not reach. Here he is at his most candid, reporting from all over the country: from tiny, crowded homes in the swollen cities of the southeast rim to a vast, secret network... (more)

White Mughals: Love and Betrayal in Eighteenth-Century India

White Mughals: Love and Betrayal in Eighteenth-Century India

by William Dalrymple

Conjuring all the sweep of a great nineteenth-century novel, acclaimed author William Dalrymple unearths the fascinating story of the British Resident at the court of the Nizam of Hyderabad, James Kirkpatrick, who in 1798 fell in love with the great-niece of the Hyderabadi prime minister. To marry her, Kirkpatrick converted to Islam and even became a double agent working against the East India Company. Shedding... (more)

Samurai William: The Englishman Who Opened Japan

Samurai William: The Englishman Who Opened Japan

by Giles Milton

With all the adventure, derring-do, and bloodcurdling battle scenes of his earlier book, Nathaniel’s Nutmeg , acclaimed historian Giles Milton dazzles readers with the true story of William Adams—the first Englishman to set foot in Japan (and the inspiration for James Clavell’s bestselling novel Shogun ). Beginning with Adams’s startling letter to the East India Company in 1611—more than a decade after ... (more)

Red China Blues: My Long March From Mao to Now

Red China Blues: My Long March From Mao to Now

by Jan Wong

A Canadian of Chinese descent recounts her sojourn in Communist China beginning in 1972, during which her strong faith in Maoist ideology gave way to sympathy with the dissident movement that began under Deng Xiaoping. Reprint. PW. "

What About the Big Stuff?

by Richard Carlson

ith more than 21 million copies in print, Richard Carlson's bestselling Don't Sweat series has shown countless families, lovers, and workers how not to sweat the small stuff. Now, in his soothing and wise trademark tone, Carlson takes a different approach and discusses life's bigger issues, including dealing with the death of a loved one, how divorce affects your family and friends, confronting illness, whether in... (more)

Star in the East: Krishnamurti--the invention of a Messiah

Star in the East: Krishnamurti--the invention of a Messiah

by Roland Vernon

The extraordinary story of Krishnamurti, hailed early in life as the messiah for the 20th century, is told here in the light of a century of changing spiritual attitudes. It is a tale of mysticism, sexual scandals, religious fervor and chicanery, out of which emerged one of the most influential thinkers of modern times. Krishnamurti was "discovered" as a young boy on a beach in India by members of the Theosophical... (more)

God's Secretaries: The Making of the King James Bible (P.S.)

God's Secretaries: The Making of the King James Bible (P.S.)

by Adam Nicolson

A network of complex currents flowed across Jacobean England. This was the England of Shakespeare, Jonson, and Bacon; the era of the Gunpowder Plot and the worst outbreak of the plague. Jacobean England was both more godly and less godly than the country had ever been, and the entire culture was drawn taut between these polarities. This was the world that created the King James Bible. It is the greatest work of... (more)

Among the Believers: An Islamic Journey

by V. S. Naipaul

Naipaul's controversial account of his travels through the Islamic world was hailed by The New Republic as "the most notable work on contemporary Islam to have appeared in a very long time."

Semites and Anti-Semites: An Inquiry into Conflict and Prejudice

Semites and Anti-Semites: An Inquiry into Conflict and Prejudice

by Bernard Lewis

The Arab-Israeli conflict has unsettled the Middle East for over half a century. This conflict is primarily political, a clash between states and peoples over territory and history. But it is also a conflict that has affected and been affected by prejudice. For a long time this was simply the "normal" prejudice between neighboring people of different religions and ethnic origins. In the present age,... (more)

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by Colin Mason