Yoga Self-Taught


André Van Lysebeth - 1968
    Unlike other yoga books which show only the completed posture, these illustrations show the intermediate steps for attaining the final postures. For beginning students, this classic book is a perfect introduction to yoga.

Cypherpunks: Freedom and the Future of the Internet


Julian Assange - 2012
    Julian Assange, the editor-in-chief of and visionary behind WikiLeaks, has been a leading voice in the cypherpunk movement since its inception in the 1980s.Now, in what is sure to be a wave-making new book, Assange brings together a small group of cutting-edge thinkers and activists from the front line of the battle for cyber-space to discuss whether electronic communications will emancipate or enslave us. Among the topics addressed are: Do Facebook and Google constitute "the greatest surveillance machine that ever existed," perpetually tracking our location, our contacts and our lives? Far from being victims of that surveillance, are most of us willing collaborators? Are there legitimate forms of surveillance, for instance in relation to the "Four Horsemen of the Infopocalypse" (money laundering, drugs, terrorism and pornography)? And do we have the ability, through conscious action and technological savvy, to resist this tide and secure a world where freedom is something which the Internet helps bring about?The harassment of WikiLeaks and other Internet activists, together with attempts to introduce anti-file sharing legislation such as SOPA and ACTA, indicate that the politics of the Internet have reached a crossroads. In one direction lies a future that guarantees, in the watchwords of the cypherpunks, "privacy for the weak and transparency for the powerful"; in the other lies an Internet that allows government and large corporations to discover ever more about internet users while hiding their own activities. Assange and his co-discussants unpick the complex issues surrounding this crucial choice with clarity and engaging enthusiasm.

Yin Yoga: Outline of a Quiet Practice


Paul Grilley - 2002
    The Yin aspect of Yoga (using postures that stretch connective tissue) is virtually unknown but vital for a balanced approach to physical and mental health. Paul Grilley outlines how to practice postures in a Yin way. Grilley includes an explanation of Modern Meridian Theory, which states that the meridians of acupuncture theory are currents flowing through the connective tissues of the body. Yin Yoga is specifically designed to address these tissues. For yoga practitioners looking for something beyond physical postures, Yin Yoga addresses the deeper spiritual dimensions of yoga, with helpful sections on chakras, breathing exercises, and meditation.

In Search of the Edge of Time: Black Holes, White Holes, Wormholes


John Gribbin - 1992
    Physicists who formerly shunned these astrophysical eccentricities have begun to theorize about them and search for the physical proof of their existence with the zeal of converts. The unavoidable conclusion of this research is that these rips in the fabric of spacetime are not only real, they might actually provide a passage to other universes and travel through time. This book tells the story of the theories and discoveries that have led scientists to these conclusions.

Forbidden Archeology: The Hidden History of the Human Race


Michael A. Cremo - 1993
    Forbidden Archeology documents a systematic process of "knowledge filtration" and constitutes a serious challenge to the Darwinian theory of evolution.

An Afghanistan Picture Show: Or, How I Saved the World


William T. Vollmann - 1992
    Vollmann, one of our most versatile talents, traveled to see the war in Afghanistan. In An Afghanistan Picture Show, his first book-length work of non-fiction, Vollmann paints a brutally honest and dryly comic portrait of a young American coming to terms with his political naivete. It is the story of a would-be giver who finds himself a perpetual Stranger, unable to comprehend the simplest things he hears and sees, and continually compelled to rely on others for help. In two narrative perspectives, Vollmann wryly confronts his own inadequacy in the face of limitless suffering and comes to the realization that one who went to aid and to understand could only hope, trust, and receive. In An Afghanistan Picture Show Vollmann describes a Cold War world of spies and lurking strangeness, a world in which his younger self asks unanswerable questions of orphans, refugees, guerrilla leaders, bureaucrats, corrupt officials, and prescient has-been politicians. He tells of Pakistan, a country as gracious in spirit as she is materially poor. And in his unnerving innocence Vollmann explores a land in which others continually invest him with almost supernatural powers simply because he is American. An ingenious narrative which inverts the very concept of the "white man's burden" and questions the idea of "truth" in non-fiction, An Afghanistan Picture Show stands as William T. Vollmann most entertaining--and autobiographical--work to date.

Islam Explained


Tahar Ben Jelloun - 2001
    The book also sheds light on the key words that have come to dominate the media—terrorist, crusade, jihad, fundamentalist, fatwa—offering lucid and balanced explanations, not only for youngsters but also for the general reader.Islam Explained is at once an essential introduction to one of the world’s great religions and a cry for tolerance and understanding in deeply troubled times.

Welcome to Your World: How the Built Environment Shapes Our Lives


Sarah Williams Goldhagen - 2017
    From this foundation, Goldhagen presents a powerful case that societies must use this knowledge to rethink what and how they build: the world needs better-designed, healthier environments that address the complex range of human individual and social needs.By 2050 America’s population is projected to increase by nearly seventy million people. This will necessitate a vast amount of new construction—almost all in urban areas—that will dramatically transform our existing landscapes, infrastructure, and urban areas. Going forward, we must do everything we can to prevent the construction of exhausting, overstimulating environments and enervating, understimulating ones. Buildings, landscapes, and cities must both contain and spark associations of natural light, greenery, and other ways of being in landscapes that humans have evolved to need and expect. Fancy exteriors and dramatic forms are never enough, and may not even be necessary; authentic textures and surfaces, and careful, well-executed construction details are just as important.Erudite, wise, lucidly written, and beautifully illustrated with more than one hundred color photographs, Welcome to Your World is a vital, eye-opening guide to the spaces we inhabit, physically and mentally, and a clarion call to design for human experience.

Encyclopedia of Unusual Sex Practices


Brenda Love - 1992
    Brenda Love covers strange methods of arousal as will as hundreds of bizarre sex activities such as erotic balls, and love potions.

The Body Has Its Reasons: Self-Awareness Through Conscious Movement


Thérèse Bertherat - 1976
    They introduce movement that is based on a profound selfawareness, freeing us from our limiting attitudes about ourselves and our bodies. Strangers to our own bodies, many of us spend our adult lives suffering from tensions and chronic aches and pains--problems that have no apparent genesis or solution. In repeating habitual patterns of movement, we ignore the range of possibilities available to us, so that the body suppresses and eventually forgets its natural grace and integration. Employing traditional exercises to alleviate the symptoms of a round stomach, a bad back, and muscles that ache after sports, we often force the body to act against itself and perpetuate our discomfort. A physical therapist and teacher of movement in Europe, Bertherat takes the reader through a series of precise, gentle, organic movements. These “anti-exercises” develop the body’s range and freedom of movement, releasing constraints and reawakening dormant muscles. By using the appropriate energy for each gesture, they bring relief from a multitude of ills, at the same time awakening the senses and sharpening perceptions. The Body Has Its Reasons offers a realistic alternative to conventional body work that can help you become more efficient, creative, and self-confident. It can increase your intellectual capacity as well as your athletic ability and free you of sexual problems, including frigidity and impotence. No matter what your age, the information in these pages can help you release the beautiful and well-made individual that you were meant to be.

Daddy Issues


Katherine Angel - 2019
    Contemporary feminism has re-embraced thinking about the big ideas - patriarchy, capitalism, care. But contemporary concern about men tends to relate to the men in our lives other than our fathers: our partners, friends, colleagues, bosses - many of whom are also, of course, fathers. Discontent with fathers has increasingly been privatised within feminist discourse. Daddy issues have been relegated to the realm of personal problems individuals take to therapists. In this bold, daring essay Katherine Angel asks: what is the father daughter relationship today? How can it be understood politically? What political harms are done in the name of a father's love? Drawing on classic works by Virginia Woolf and Valerie Solanas along with more recent examples drawn from literature, film and TV, Angel examines how artists have conveyed the painful powers of the father in relation to the daughter.

World Heritage Sites: A Complete Guide to 890 UNESCO World Heritage Sites


UNESCO - 2009
    In response, UNESCO launched an international safeguarding campaign, which ultimately led to the list of World Heritage sites. In clear text that highlights all the fascinating facts, World Heritage Sites details all 878 properties, including the 20 American and 15 Canadian sites. Covering 141 countries, the World Heritage List has proved to be a valuable tool in the battle to preserve much of the world's cultural and natural heritage. Its strict criteria result in only the world's most spectacular and extraordinary sites making it onto the list, including: The Acropolis in Athens, The Statue of Liberty in New York, The Rideau Canal in eastern Ontario, Waterton Glacier International Peace Park, the world's first international peace park, which straddles the US-Canada border, The ancient Nabataean city of Petra in Jordan, The remarkable Dazu Rock Carvings in China, Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site in Missouri, the largest pre- Columbian settlement north of Mexico, The unique ecosystem of the Serengeti in Tanzania, And 870 more. Featuring gorgeous photographs and a location map for every site, World Heritage Sites is uniquely comprehensive. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) was founded in 1945 with the ambitious goal to build peace in the minds of men and women through education, social and natural science, culture and communication.

Being Digital


Nicholas Negroponte - 1995
    Negroponte's fans will want to get a copy of Being Digital, which is an edited version of the 18 articles he wrote for Wired about "being digital." Negroponte's text is mostly a history of media technology rather than a set of predictions for future technologies. In the beginning, he describes the evolution of CD-ROMs, multimedia, hypermedia, HDTV (high-definition television), and more. The section on interfaces is informative, offering an up-to-date history on visual interfaces, graphics, virtual reality (VR), holograms, teleconferencing hardware, the mouse and touch-sensitive interfaces, and speech recognition. In the last chapter and the epilogue, Negroponte offers visionary insight on what "being digital" means for our future. Negroponte praises computers for their educational value but recognizes certain dangers of technological advances, such as increased software and data piracy and huge shifts in our job market that will require workers to transfer their skills to the digital medium. Overall, Being Digital provides an informative history of the rise of technology and some interesting predictions for its future.

The Copernican Revolution: Planetary Astronomy in the Development of Western Thought


Thomas S. Kuhn - 1957
    Few episodes in the development of scientific theory show so clearly how the solution to a highly technical problem can alter our basic thought processes and attitudes. Understanding the processes which underlay the Revolution gives us a perspective, in this scientific age, from which to evaluate our own beliefs more intelligently. With a constant keen awareness of the inseparable mixture of its technical, philosophical, and humanistic elements, Thomas S. Kuhn displays the full scope of the Copernican Revolution as simultaneously an episode in the internal development of astronomy, a critical turning point in the evolution of scientific thought, and a crisis in Western man's concept of his relation to the universe and to God.The book begins with a description of the first scientific cosmology developed by the Greeks. Mr. Kuhn thus prepares the way for a continuing analysis of the relation between theory and observation and belief. He describes the many functions--astronomical, scientific, and nonscientific--of the Greek concept of the universe, concentrating especially on the religious implications. He then treats the intellectual, social, and economic developments which nurtured Copernicus' break with traditional astronomy. Although many of these developments, including scholastic criticism of Aristotle's theory of motion and the Renaissance revival of Neoplatonism, lie entirely outside of astronomy, they increased the flexibility of the astronomer's imagination. That new flexibility is apparent in the work of Copernicus, whose De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres) is discussed in detail both for its own significance and as a representative scientific innovation.With a final analysis of Copernicus' life work--its reception and its contribution to a new scientific concept of the universe--Mr. Kuhn illuminates both the researches that finally made the heliocentric arrangement work, and the achievements in physics and metaphysics that made the planetary earth an integral part of Newtonian science. These are the developments that once again provided man with a coherent and self-consistent conception of the universe and of his own place in it.This is a book for any reader interested in the evolution of ideas and, in particular, in the curious interplay of hypothesis and experiment which is the essence of modern science. Says James Bryant Conant in his Foreword: "Professor Kuhn's handling of the subject merits attention, for...he points the way to the road which must be followed if science is to be assimilated into the culture of our times."

The Mystical Qabalah


Dion Fortune - 1957
    This Weiser Classics edition is newly re-typeset and include a new foreword by Judika Illes and a new afterword by Stuart R. Harrop, co-director of the Society of Inner Light (founded in 1924 by Dion Fortune).Dion Fortune's classic, The Mystical Qabalah, explores all aspects of the Qabalah, including the esoteric sciences of astrology and tarot, which form the basis of the Western Mystery Traditions. It provides a key to the practical working of this mystical system for both novice and initiate alike.