Made into a movie starring Patrick Swayze, this is the inspiring story of an American doctor who experienced a spiritual rebirth in an impoverished section of Calcutta.

    Using scraps cut from the family's old clothing, Tanya helps her grandmother and mother make a beautiful quilt that tells the story of her family's life.

    This is a full-fledged lovers' tragedy between a drifter-turned-writer and the fatally flawed Betty, his muse and obsessive promoter.

    Louis with a riveting account of the samurai tradition in Japan. Intertwining tales of the masters with reflections on his own apprenticeship in the samurai's arts, he reveals in their time-honored methods a way of life with profound relevance to modern times. The result is a fascinating, singular autobiography. Lowry captures the sense of wonder and mystery that makes martial arts compelling to so many practitioners. Even those who do not practice martial arts will delight in this unusual coming-of-age story.

    

    Detailed and accurate Street Finder maps give you instant access to each district. Unique cutaways and floor plans help you explore public buildings and landmarks — no need to purchase other guides. The Survival Guide shows you how to use local currency, public transportation, and telephones. Clear and concise maps give you instant access to all regions. The best travel guides ever. (Sky Magazine ) Eyewitness Travel Guides, considered to be the world's best travel resource to over 30 destinations around the world, make it easier to plan a splendid vacation. (North American Press Syndication) This is a guidebook series that always seems to inspire smiles...You feel, looking at them, as if you could close the book and step into the street. (Contra Costa Times ) Encyclopedic in scope, it's meant to be used before, during, and after your stay. (Travel & Leisure) Each book is a visual as well as informational feast about a particular place. (The New York Times) The most graphically exciting and visually pleasing series on the market. (Chicago Tribune) Both novice and experienced travelers will be captivated. (U.S. News & World Report) Want to know where to get a great espresso on your way to the Uffizi? Or how much to tip a hotel maid in New York City? Try these travel guides, each an intricate trove of 3-D aerial views, landmark floor plans, color photos and essential eating, shopping and entertainment info. With titles covering Paris, Prague, and London, these pocket-sized guides are like a Michelangelo fresco: deliriously rich in detail. (People Magazine)

    This handsome new edition of the authoritative English translation of the Aramaic (Syriac) Old and New Testaments--the language of Jesus--clarifies difficult passages and offers fresh insight on the Bible's message.

    Each of the 251 episodes are reprised, complete with interviews of the people who made it and acted in it. More than 200 photos capture key scenes as well as intimate backstage moments.

    Exploring the deleterious effects of the systematic downgrading of the senses in Western philosophy, Michel Serres — a member of the Académie Française and one of France's leading philosophers — traces a topology of human perception. Writing against the Cartesian tradition and in praise of empiricism, he demonstrates repeatedly, and lyrically, the sterility of systems of knowledge divorced from bodily experience. The fragile empirical world, long resistant to our attempts to contain and catalog it, is disappearing beneath the relentless accumulations of late capitalist society and information technology. Data has replaced sensory pleasure, we are less interested in the taste of a fine wine than in the description on the bottle's label. What are we, and what do we really know, when we have forgotten that our senses can describe a taste more accurately than language ever could?

    Azami's work examines the sources used by Schacht to develop his thesis on the relation of Islamic law to the Qur'an, and exposes fundamental flaws in Schacht's methodology that led to the conclusions unsupported by the texts examined. This book is an important contribution to Islamic legal studies from an Islamic perspective.

    With careful documentation and specific case histories, former congressman Paul Findley demonstrates how the Israel lobby helps to shape important aspects of U.S. foreign policy and influences congressional, senatorial, and even presidential elections. Described are the undue influence AIPAC exerts in the Senate and the House and the pressure AIPAC brings to bear on university professors and journalists who seem too sympathetic to Arab and Islamic states and too critical of Israel and its policies. Along with many longtime outspoken critics, new voices speaking out include former President Jimmy Carter, U.S. Representative Cynthia McKinney, Senator Robert Byrd, prominent Arab-American Dr. Ziad Asali, Rabbi Michael Lerner, and journalist Charles Reese. In addition, the lack of open debate among politicians with regard to the U.S. policy in the Middle East is lamented, and AIPAC is blamed in part for this censorship. Connections are drawn between America’s unconditional support of Israel and the raging anti-American passions around the world—and ultimately the tragic events of 9/11. This replaces 1556520735.

    Rebbe Nachman practiced this ancient method to perfection. More elaborate than any of his previous teachings, the stories are fast-moving, richly structured and filled with penetrating insights -- while spellbinding and entertaining. Rabbi Kaplan's translation is accompanied by a masterful commentary drawn from the works of Rebbe Nachman's pupils. For the first time the English-speaking reader has access to authentic interpretations of the stories.

    Advancing a daring andsophisticated theory, Meyrowitz shows how television and other electronic media have created new social situations that are no longer shaped by where we are or who is with us.While other media experts have limited the debate to message content, Meyrowitz focuses on the ways in which changes in media rearrange who knows what about whom and who knows what compared to whom, making it impossible for us to behave with each other in traditional ways. No Sense of Placeexplains how the electronic landscape has encouraged the development of:-More adultlike children and more childlike adults;-More career-oriented women and more family-oriented men; and-Leaders who try to act more like the person next door and real neighbors who want to have a greater say in local, national, and international affairs.The dramatic changes fostered by electronic media, notes Meyrowitz, are neither entirely good nor entirely bad. In some ways, we are returning to older, pre-literate forms of social behavior, becoming hunters and gatherers of an information age. In other ways, we are rushing forward into a newsocial world. New media have helped to liberate many people from restrictive, place-defined roles, but the resulting heightened expectations have also led to new social tensions and frustrations. Once taken-for-granted behaviors are now subject to constant debate and negotiation.The book richly explicates the quadruple pun in its title: Changes in media transform how we sense information and how we make sense of our physical and social places in the world.

    A collection of stories from Russian folklore organized into chapters dealing with such subjects as giants & midgets, serpents & dragons, and blacksmiths & ploughmen.

    This situation supposedly persisted until the Women's Rights Movement and World War I forced the world to acknowledge that women were liberated individuals with legs. Yet Valerie steele demonstrates that eroticism formed the basis for the Victorian ideal of feminine beauty and fashion--indeed, that the concepts of beauty and fashion are essentially erotic. She shows that, far from being passive "sex objects," Victorian women, like their modern counterparts, themselves chose to emulate an erotic ideal as an aspect of their own self-fulfillment. Even the notorious corset was neither fetishistic nor an unhealthy instrument of torture, she argues, although its comlex and ambivalent sexual symbolism aroused controversy. Fashion and Eroticism shows how the New Look of "sexy" modern naturally from within the pre-war world of fashion and not as part of an intifashion movement. Steele's conclusions are based on prodigious documentary evidence, including visual and material research, in costume collections in the United States, Great Britain, Europe, and even Japan. Fashiona and Eroticism is not only a radical revision of the Conventional understanding of Victorian fashion; it is a major contribution to the histyory of women and sexuality.About the Author Valerie steele received her Ph.D. from Yale University in 1983, and was the 1984 First Ladies' Fellow at the Division of Costume, National Museum of American History, the Smithsonian Institution.

    Here, too, we're treated to repetitions of insignificant pieces of color--such as J. Robert Oppenheimer's way with a martini--or of trivial details: does anyone care that the pistol tucked into General Leslie Groves' trousers was a "tiny Colt automatic...a .32 caliber on a .25 caliber frame"? But his technique, while no more insightful than in his previous narratives, is easier to take here--partly because the main figures, the physicists, are real characters. Take Leo Szilard, the Hungarian scientist who adopted the atomic bomb as a personal crusade in fear of a German military juggernaut. Living out of two suitcases that contained everything he owned, Szilard provided the impetus to fission research & teamed with Enrico Fermi in executing the successful chain reaction test at the Univ. of Chicago. (The test was kept secret from its president, Robert Hutchins, by physical science dean Arthur Holly Compton for fear that Hutchins would veto it as too dangerous.) Szilard, a delicatessenfare addict, didn't join Oppenheimer's Los Alamos project; but he did manage to keep up a running feud with Groves--in part, over the extravagant remuneration Szilard expected from his reactor patent. Wandering about, lost in thought, Szilard drove the security men tailing him crazy. (Groves was trying to get something on Szilard. He never did.) When Szilard began another crusade, this time to forestall the actual use of the bomb on Japan, he became Groves' principal pain (& a pain to Oppenheimer, who'd come out forcefully in favor of the bomb's immediate use). About as close as Wyden gets to anything of substance is the thread of lack-of-attention to radiation & its effects. (They assumed radiation effects wouldn't carry as far as the blast effects.) The news of radiation death from Hiroshima & Nagasaki was a shock to the scientists & covered up by Groves; but this, too, is familiar. The establishment of Los Alamos & the bureaucratic labyrinths are handled well, however. Drawbacks & all, this account will serve excellently for 1st-timers.--Kirkus (edited)

    

    A lyric opera with attractive melodies and ballets, the work features powerful choruses, picturesque orchestrations and ravishingly beautiful parts for solo voices. The complete full score, reproduced from an authoritative French edition, will delight music and opera lovers alike.

    Fascinating features of each era are highlighted such as the giant tombs of the Kofun period built by Chinese and Koreans. The power and the influence of the samurais are extensively depicted. The impact of western influences and how the Japanese wrestled with such influences are also explored. The tumultuous events leading to the collapse of the power of the samurais in the 19th centur are also documented. The devastation of the Second World War is illustrated and the book ends with Japan of today. Flowing from one page to the next, Shigeo Nishimura has taken the significant events and personalities of each historical period and brought them to life in vivid and detailed color, helping young readers grasp what people were like and how they lived long ago. Even if it's called the medieval era or aristocratic era, there were always common people--farmers, fishermen, craftmen and merchants. This picture book features the people who took part in the different trades, occupations, and lifestyles, and shows the history of Japan through the stone age to the present day. Illustrating almost 3,500 people, this is a magnificent history book.