Amrapali craved peace; Upagupta’s bearing exuded contentment. Amrapali depended on the adulation of her audience; Upagupta spurned the attentions of the rich and famous. Their stories were different, but the Buddha’s wise teachings linked their lives – and the lessons to be learned from them.

    Setting out across the harsh desert in order to forge a new path to 1837 California, daring mountain man Hugh Falconer leads his band of roughnecks and outcasts through the dangerous land against menacing odds.

    This book, essentially an “anarchist history,” is the first-ever examination of the huge literature on state-making whose author evaluates why people would deliberately and reactively remain stateless. Among the strategies employed by the people of Zomia to remain stateless are physical dispersion in rugged terrain; agricultural practices that enhance mobility; pliable ethnic identities; devotion to prophetic, millenarian leaders; and maintenance of a largely oral culture that allows them to reinvent their histories and genealogies as they move between and around states.In accessible language, James Scott, recognized worldwide as an eminent authority in Southeast Asian, peasant, and agrarian studies, tells the story of the peoples of Zomia and their unlikely odyssey in search of self-determination. He redefines our views on Asian politics, history, demographics, and even our fundamental ideas about what constitutes civilization, and challenges us with a radically different approach to history that presents events from the perspective of stateless peoples and redefines state-making as a form of “internal colonialism.” This new perspective requires a radical reevaluation of the civilizational narratives of the lowland states. Scott’s work on Zomia represents a new way to think of area studies that will be applicable to other runaway, fugitive, and marooned communities, be they Gypsies, Cossacks, tribes fleeing slave raiders, Marsh Arabs, or San-Bushmen.

    A large stone Venus. Nothing unusual about it_except that it was found on an island in the Pacific Northwest. Archaeologist Hannah Green and her shovelbum nephew find themselves in a tangled web of competing interests avaricious land owners, hungry media, and a cult of goddess worshippers while investigating one of the finds of the century. In untangling the mystery of the Washington Venus, Hannah and Sean have to confront questions of archaeological evidence, of ethics, of conflicting interpretation of data, and of the very nature of archaeological truths. Helping them are a cadre of disdainful graduate students who propose various theories processualist, marxist, feminist, postmodernist to explain the bizarre events. Teach your students archaeological theory in a fashion they'll enjoy, while they solve the mystery in Adrian Praetzellis's delightful textbook-as-novel.

    Coe's Mexico has long been recognized as the most readable and authoritative introduction to the region’s ancient civilizations. This companion to his best-selling The Maya has now been completely revised and expanded for the fifth edition by Professor Coe and Rex Koontz. Colour plated an a section on touring Mexico have been added, making the book an even more valuable companion on any visit to Mexico's rich archaeological treasures.

    Rather, it is a late and localized product of very specific historical conditions, which required great transformations in social relations and in the human interaction with nature.This new edition is substantially revised and expanded, with extensive new material on imperialism, anti-Eurocentric history, capitalism and the nation-state, and the differences between capitalism and non-capitalist commerce. The author traces links between the origin of capitalism and contemporary conditions such as globalization, ecological degradation, and the current agricultural crisis.

    This book paints an interesting picture of the lifestyle behind the grandeur of the Tang culture. Various aspects of day-to-day life are presented, including crime, entertainment, fashion, marriage, food, hygiene, dwellings, and transportation

    Control over law and order has long since passed from the hands of the administration to caste-based gangs and organized crime syndicates enjoying political patronage. Kidnapping has become one of the flourishing businesses of the state, while every other industry has dwindled down and the development plank has gone on a pause mode, on account of Rangdari, which is yet another booming business apart from contract killing, smuggling, illegal tree cutting, and vehicle snatching. Migration to other states is at peak: not only of big businessmen, but also of lowly laborers. And those who can’t leave the state are either sucked into the crime world or are forced to live under fear. Albeit the local newspapers everyday sketch the sordid saga of the state, the execrable condition is not likely to improve by any means in the near future. Digambar Babu, a middle-aged man of a small town Motihari (the place of Mahatma Gandhi's Champaran Satyagrah), is dejected and dismayed for his family falling apart, and so sets himself on a mission to make amends for the mistakes he has done in the past. Shakuntala Devi, his wife, infuriated at herself for having devoted her whole life selflessly and arduously for her ungrateful family, wants to make up for the injustice she has done to herself, by living the rest of her life selfishly. Sarvesh, their asthmatic son, whose first marriage perished about a decade ago, is still struggling with both his career and his married life, and Nisha, their daughter, is married to someone whom she thinks she will never be able to love. The biggest threat to the already troubled family is Nisha’s ex-lover Kanhaiya Tiwari, who is the youngest corporator of the town, and has sworn to ruin the family. Shyam, Nisha’s husband, who is ‘the absorber of the emotions’, in keeping with his fluidity, writhes in pain but transforms time and again, in order to win his wife’s heart, while Savita, Sarvesh’s current wife, colludes with Kanhaiya Tiwari in his evil intent, in order to have all the strings of the family in her hands. Benighted in Sodom, they weave their web of Karma, and fabricate their fates, but the biggest sufferer in the ruthless game of dominance and survival are the innocent children of the family.The story tries to draw parallels between Digambar Babu’s disarrayed family and the disordered town. The novel is inspired from the real events happened in the town during 90’s era of jungle-raaj.

    We are imprisoned within our materialist maze, believing in and reckoning only with what we see or touch and whatever is beyond that, does not really exist. This disconnection is the cause of much suffering, misery, and even sickness. When we change that perception and realize that there are many things beyond what we see and feel, and that there is a whole energetic world, to which we are connected, only then our lives begin to change. This book was conceived in order to broaden our perception This book will teach you about the aura, the energetic body, and all about our energetic parts. It will teach you simple skills, with which you will be able to balance yourself and live a healthier, happier, more serene and fulfilled life.

    Richard Sennett’s insights into the danger of the cult of individualism remain thoroughly relevant to our world today. In a new epilogue, he extends his analysis to the new “public” realm of social media, questioning how public culture has fared since the digital revolution.

    This guidebook is not meant to replace a Lonely Planet/Frommers/Rough Guide, but rather to compliment them. In NZ Frenzy you'll find info about all the South's must-see spots, plus detailed info about the lesser-known and unheralded off-the-beaten-path wonder spots. This guidebook goes WAY beyond the vague outdoor info in the mainstream travel guidebooks. NZ Frenzy is about giving you the details you'll need to find the "real" NZ, the one without lines of tour buses, the one without brochures of pay-to-see commercialized natural "attractions". NZ Frenzy, unlike any of the other mainstream guidebooks, will deliver you to the New Zealand that you've been planning for and fantasizing about. I guarantee it. Please read the reviews of NZ Frenzy North Island to see what travelers think of my info. Are you going to NZ to be a tourist at touristy crowded places or do you want to find the "Real" New Zealand that you'll tell stories about?? When you have an NZ Frenzy in hand, you'll leave the other guidebooks in the glove box and you'll leave the tourists behind!! The South Island has natural wonders beyond compare, but the mainstream media only promotes the commercialized stuff. Don't waste your precious time while in NZ waiting in line at the tourist visitor centers...get NZ Frenzy and go experience the Real New Zealand, the Fabled New Zealand. You can have the trip of a lifetime, you will have the trip of a lifetime!!

    Biographies of fifteen composers of Nahuatl verse and analyses of their work are followed by their extant poems in Nahuatl and in English.The poets - fourteen men and one woman - lived in the central highlands of Mexico and spoke Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs, Texcocans, Tlaxcalans, and several other chiefdoms. These authors of "flower and song" (a Nahuatl metaphor for poetry, art, and symbolism) lived during the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries. Sources for the poems included indigenous "codices," books of songs" now unfortunately lost, and renditions of them preserved by the Nahuatl oral tradition, which survived the Spanish Conquest and were recorded by several young natives in two manuscripts.

    Created by the Africans brought to Brazil as slaves beginning in 1500, capoeira was forbidden by law but survived underground. When open practice was allowed in the 1930s it soon became very popular. Capoeira came to America around 1975, and has become widely recognized by dancers and martial artists. The author discusses capoeira's evolution from Brazilian street play into a way of life. The philosophy of capoeira, and the practical and spiritual benefits of this philosophy, are also discussed. Instructions and exercises in intermediate and advanced skills take up where the author's previous book left off. The book includes 100 black-and-white photos and illustrations.

    The book contains pictures of their pyramids and palaces, jades and brightly coloured paintings. The author of this work provides fresh readings of Mesoamerican works of art while offering archaeological interpretations. Also included in the book are hieroglyphic decipherments which give insights into ancient works, confirming the connections between the Maya and their neighbours.

    Smith asks why the first modern nation-states developed in the West and considers how ethnic origins, religion, language, and shared symbols provide a sense of nation—even to the Basques, Kurds, and Tamils who are without states of their own. He illuminates his argument with a wealth of detailed examples: the divisions in the former Soviet Union, ethnic separatism within Europes, pan-Arab and pan-African movements, the successes and failures of nation-building on every continent. Throughout National Identity Smith stresses the positive as well as the pernicious aspects of strong national allegiances. A provocative final chapter considers the prospects of a post-national world. This will be of particular interest to ethnographers, students of international studies, historical sociologists, and political scientists.