Nor do you need to burn incense or rub crystals.This book shows you easy ways to meditate whenever and wherever you want—you’ll learn how to do it without anyone knowing—and still hang out with your military pals, cop buddies, and fellow martial arts students. You can still own a pit bull, drive a Harley, and share lies with your drinking buddies. The same is true whether you’re a firefighter, doorman, bodyguard, medic, or security officer. The simple fact is, meditation as taught within these pages, will make you a better warrior.

    Newly revised and updated, A History of Japan is a fascinating look at the nation of Japan throughout history. Starting in ancient Japan during its early pre-history period A History of Japan covers every important aspect of history and culture through feudal Japan to the post-cold War period and collapse of the Bubble Economy in the early 1990's. Recent findings shed additional light on the origins of Japanese civilization and the birth of Japanese culture. Also included is an in-depth analysis of the Japanese religion, Japanese arts, Japanese culture and the Japanese People from the 6th century B.C.E. to the present. This contemporary classic, now updated and revised, continues to be an essential text in Japanese studies. Classic illustrations and unique pictures are dispersed throughout the book.A History of Japan, Revised Edition includes: Archaic Japan—including Yamato, the creation of a unified state, the Nana Period, and the Heian period Medieval Japan— including rule by the military houses, the failure of Ashikaga Rule, Buddhism, and the Kamakura and Muroachi Periods periods Ealy Modern Japan—including Japanese feudalism, administration under the Tokugawa, and society and culture in early modern Japan Modern Japan—including The Meiji Era and policies for modernization, from consensus to crisis (1912-1937), and solutions through force This contemporary classic continues to be a central book in Japanese studies and is an vital addition to the collection of any student or enthusiast of Japanese history, Japanese culture, or the Japanese Language.

    Age twenty-eight and fed up with the office job he settled for, Paul Barach decided to travel to Japan to follow a vision he had in college: to walk the ancient 750-mile Shikoku pilgrimage trail. Here are some things he did not decide to do: learn Japanese, do any research, road test his hiking shoes, or check if it’s the hottest summer in history. And he went anyway, hoping to change his life. Fighting Monks and Burning Mountains is the absurd and dramatic journey of one impulsive American’s search for answers on a holy path in an exotic land. Along the pathway connecting 88 Buddhist temples, he’ll face arduous mountain climbs, hide from guards in a toilet stall, challenge a priest to a mountaintop karate battle, and other misadventures. He’ll also delve into the fascinating legends of this ancient land, including a dragon-fighting holy man, a berserker warrior-priest, haunted temples, all manner of gods and monsters, and a vendetta-driven ghost that overthrew a dynasty. Told with humor and humility, Fighting Monks and Burning Mountains is a funny, engaging memoir about the consequences of impulsive decisions, and the things you can discover while you’re looking for something else. Also that boars are terrifying in person.

    Gorn's The Manly Art tells the story of boxing's origins and the sport's place in American culture. When first published in 1986, the book helped shape the ways historians write about American sport and culture, expanding scholarly boundaries by exploring masculinity as an historical subject and by suggesting that social categories like gender, class, and ethnicity can be understood only in relation to each other.

    With the value of their martial skills on the decline, the samurai sought new spiritual, moral, psychological, and physical moorings. Tsunetomo Yamamoto, author of the now-classic Hagakure, combined a Confucian sense of justice with a Zen-influenced abandonment of the ego to espouse loyalty and death as paramount qualities of the samurai's calling.Kaibara Ekiken (16301714), a samurai physician with philosophical and Buddhist leanings, took the opposite approach. He sought ways for a healthier, more rewarding life. In his Yojokun: Life Lessons from a Samurai, he collected six decades of study and observation to compile one of the most remarkable commentaries of his age. Ekiken's sweep was vast. In Yojokun, he combined his knowledge of holistic health, the principles of chi (the material force that pervades all things) and jin (human heartedness), Buddhism, Confucianism, and the art of living. He addressed concerns that ran from mental and physical health to spiritual matters. His discourses examined the intake of food and drink, sexual practices, sustaining stamina and health in old age, overindulgence and restraint, bathing and healthy habits, and more. And throughout his discussion he wove a subtle but potent spiritual and philosophical thread. Yojokun offers startlingly profound and fresh insights into many of the same problems that concern us today. Translator William Scott Wilson notes Ekikens relevance for the 21st century: The Yojokun, then, is not just a vestige of quaint Orientalia, but rather a living guide to a traditional Way of life and balanced health. If we do not immediately understand some of its more exotic prescripts, it may be wiser not to dismiss them outright, but to approach the work as Ekiken himself might have: with humility, curiosity, respect, and imagination.

    In the spring of 1941, seven-year-old Hildegarde Ercklentz and her family leave their home in New York City and set off for their native Germany, where her father has been recalled to the headquarters of the Commerz & Privat Bank in Berlin. It was meant to be an epic journey, crossing the United States, the Pacific, and Siberia—but when Hitler invades Russia, a week-long stay in Yokohama, Japan becomes six years of quasi-detention, as Hildegarde and her family are stranded in Japan until the war’s end. In this spellbinding memoir, Mahoney recounts her family’s moving saga, from their courage in the face of terrible difficulties—including forced relocation, scarce rations, brutal winters in the Japanese Alps—to their joyous reunion with their German relatives in Hamburg, and their eventual return to New York City in 1950. Richly detailed and remarkably vivid, Journey Interrupted is a story unlike any other—the inspiring tale of an extraordinary family adapting to the hazards of fate, and finding salvation in each other.

    With candor he takes us behind the scenes on the set of Three's Company, and behind the sets of his hugely successful film comedies. And he shares bittersweet memories of The Mayberry Reunion, and affectionate recollections of his professional and personal relationships with such legends as Andy Griffith, Jack Benny, Red Skelton, Orson Welles, Lou Costello, and Arthur Godfrey.

    Their fleeting encounter in 1747 signals a unique moment in history where belief collided with the cold certainty of reason. Set at the tipping point between the ancient and modern world, Evening in the Palace of Reason captures the tumult of the eighteenth century, the legacy of the Reformation, and the birth of the Enlightenment in this extraordinary tale of two men.

    More than 1,300 photos make this the world's most complete guidebook.

    The brutal Ardenwald axe murders. The retribution killings by Chinatown tongs. The fiendish acts of the Dark Strangler. In this compelling account, author JD Chandler chronicles the coverups, the false confessions, the miscarriages of justice and the investigative twists and turns of Portland's infamous crimes while providing valuable historical perspective. From the untimely end of the Black Mackintosh Bandit to the convoluted hunt for the Milwaukie Monster, join Chandler as he unveils the shadowy heart of the city, acknowledges the officers who sought justice and remembers the individuals whose lives were claimed by violence.

    Unfairly tarred by liberal critics as a state comprised of racist rednecks, Arizona is on the front lines in the battle against illegal immigration—and the courageous stand of its leader, a national hero who’s been called so tough that she “eats scorpions for breakfast,” will educate and inspire Americans from coast to coast.

    It ended with the surrender of 76,000 Filipinos and Americans, the single largest defeat in American military history. The defeat, though, was only the beginning, as Michael and Elizabeth M. Norman make dramatically clear in this powerfully original book. From then until the Japanese surrendered in August 1945, the prisoners of war suffered an ordeal of unparalleled cruelty and savagery: forty-one months of captivity, starvation rations, dehydration, hard labor, deadly disease, and torture--far from the machinations of General Douglas MacArthur. The Normans bring to the story remarkable feats of reportage and literary empathy. Their protagonist, Ben Steele, is a figure out of Hemingway: a young cowboy turned sketch artist from Montana who joined the army to see the world. Juxtaposed against Steele's story and the sobering tale of the Death March and its aftermath is the story of a number of Japanese soldiers. The result is an altogether new and original World War II book: it exposes the myths of military heroism as shallow and inadequate; it makes clear, with great literary and human power, that war causes suffering for people on all sides.

    

    troops slipped behind enemy lines in the Philippines. Their mission: March thirty rugged miles to rescue 513 POWs languishing in a hellish camp, among them the last survivors of the infamous Bataan Death March. A recent prison massacre by Japanese soldiers elsewhere in the Philippines made the stakes impossibly high and left little time to plan the complex operation.In Ghost Soldiers Hampton Sides vividly re-creates this daring raid, offering a minute-by-minute narration that unfolds alongside intimate portraits of the prisoners and their lives in the camp. Sides shows how the POWs banded together to survive, defying the Japanese authorities even as they endured starvation, tropical diseases, and torture. Harrowing, poignant, and inspiring, Ghost Soldiers is the mesmerizing story of a remarkable mission. It is also a testament to the human spirit, an account of enormous bravery and self-sacrifice amid the most trying conditions.

    Her new preface considers the geisha today as a vestige of tradition as Japan heads into the 21st century.