By building a rude home in the forest and eliminating desire, poet and Buddhist priest Chomei believed he would be spared the anguish that had befallen the townspeople. Yet at the end we find the author consumed with self-doubt, questioning his own sanity and the integrity of his purpose. His voice reaches out from the distant past and speaks directly to our hearts, surprisingly modern and intensely human.Author Biography: Yasuhiko Moriguchi and David Jenkins are writers, teachers, and translators living in Kyoto. Stone Bridge Press is a leading English-language publisher of Japanese literature in translation. Our ROCK SPRING COLLECTION OF JAPANESE LITERATURE features absorbing and important translations of classical and contemporary Japanese fiction and poetry. We believe that literature is a window into culture and society, and an expression of what is most peculiarly, and universally, human.

    A masterpiece of technical exposition, it was the basic textbook of astronomy for more than a thousand years, and still is the main source for our knowledge of ancient astronomy. This translation, based on the standard Greek text of Heiberg, makes the work accessible to English readers in an intelligible and reliable form. It contains numerous corrections derived from medieval Arabic translations and extensive footnotes that take account of the great progress in understanding the work made in this century, due to the discovery of Babylonian records and other researches. It is designed to stand by itself as an interpretation of the original, but it will also be useful as an aid to reading the Greek text.

    When he became involved in a conspiracy and was imprisoned in Pavia, it was to the Greek philosophers that he turned. THE CONSOLATION was written in the period leading up to his brutal execution. It is a dialogue of alternating prose and verse between the ailing prisoner and his 'nurse' Philosophy. Her instruction on the nature of fortune and happiness, good and evil, fate and free will, restore his health and bring him to enlightenment. THE CONSOLATION was extremely popular throughout medieval Europe and his ideas were influential on the thought of Chaucer and Dante.

    Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

    Today, people of all stripes are seeking out Stoicism’s unique blend of practicality and wisdom as they look for answers to the great questions of daily life.Where should they start? Epictetus? Marcus Aurelius? Seneca? Which edition? Which translator? Presented in a page-per-day format, this daily resource combines all new translations done by Stephen Hanselman of the greatest passages from the great Stoics (including several lesser known philosophers like Zeno, Cleanthes and Musonius Rufus) with helpful commentary.Building on the organizational structure in Ryan Holiday’s cult classic The Obstacle is the Way, this guide also features twelve monthly themes (and helpful glossary) for clarifying perception, improving action, and unlocking the power of will. Aimed at the high-octane, action-oriented doers of our wired world, this book brings new daily rituals and new perspectives to produce balanced action, insight, effectiveness, and serenity.

    This witty, wry, and unique new book rectifies that wrong. Part detective story, part history lesson, part exposé, The Book of Lost Books is the first guide to literature’s what-ifs and never-weres.In compulsively readable fashion, Stuart Kelly reveals details about tantalizing vanished works by the famous, the acclaimed, and the influential, from the time of cave drawings to the late twentieth century. Here are the true stories behind stories, poems, and plays that now exist only in imagination:·Aristophanes’ Heracles, the Stage Manager was one of the playwright’s several spoofs that disappeared. ·Love’s Labours Won may have been a sequel to Shakespeare’s Love’s Labours Lost–or was it just an alternative title for The Taming of the Shrew?·Jane Austen’s incomplete novel Sanditon, was a critique of hypochondriacs and cures started when the author was fatally ill.·Nikolai Gogol burned the second half of Dead Souls after a religious conversion convinced him that literature was paganism.·Some of the thousand pages of William Burroughs’s original Naked Lunch were stolen and sold on the street by Algerian street boys.·Sylvia Plath’s widower, Ted Hughes, claimed that the 130 pages of her second novel, perhaps based on their marriage, were lost after her death.Whether destroyed (Socrates’ versions of Aesop’s Fables), misplaced (Malcolm Lowry’s Ultramarine was pinched from his publisher’s car), interrupted by the author’s death (Robert Louis Stevenson’s Weir of Hermiston), or simply never begun (Vladimir Nabokov’s Speak, America, a second volume of his memoirs), these missing links create a history of literature for a parallel world. Civilized and satirical, erudite yet accessible, The Book of Lost Books is itself a find.

    But while this epic struggle forms the core of his work, Herodotus' natural curiosity frequently gives rise to colorful digressions - a description of the natural wonders of Egypt; an account of European lake-dwellers; and far-fetched accounts of dog-headed men and gold-digging ants. With its kaleidoscopic blend of fact and legend, the "Histories" offers a compelling Greek view of the world of the fifth century BC.

    Clearly explaining more than 100 groundbreaking ideas in the field, The Psychology Book uses accessible text and easy-to-follow graphics and illustrations to explain the complex theoretical and experimental foundations of psychology.From its philosophical roots through behaviorism, psychotherapy, and developmental psychology, The Psychology Book looks at all the greats from Pavlov and Skinner to Freud and Jung, and is an essential reference for students and anyone with an interest in how the mind works.

    It’ll have you scratching your head wondering why we even bother to go to school.Think Magellan was the first man to circumnavigate the globe, baseball was invented in America, Henry VIII had six wives, Mount Everest is the tallest mountain? Wrong, wrong, wrong, and wrong again. You’ll be surprised at how much you don’t know! Check out THE BOOK OF GENERAL IGNORANCE for more fun entries and complete answers to the following:How long can a chicken live without its head?About two years.What do chameleons do?They don’t change color to match the background. Never have; never will. Complete myth. Utter fabrication. Total Lie. They change color as a result of different emotional states.How many legs does a centipede have?Not a hundred.How many toes has a two-toed sloth?It’s either six or eight.Who was the first American president?Peyton Randolph.What were George Washington’s false teeth made from?Mostly hippopotamus.What was James Bond’s favorite drink?Not the vodka martini.

    A keepsake enjoyed by tea lovers for over a hundred years, The Book of Tea Classic Edition will enhance your enjoyment and understanding of the seemingly simple act of making and drinking tea.In 1906 in turn-of-the-century Boston, a small, esoteric book about tea was written with the intention of being read aloud in the famous salon of Isabella Gardner, Boston's most notorious socialite. It was authored by Okakura Kakuzo, a Japanese philosopher, art expert, and curator. Little known at the time, Kakuzo would emerge as one of the great thinkers of the early 20th century, a genius who was insightful, witty—and greatly responsible for bridging Western and Eastern cultures. Okakura had been taught at a young age to speak English and was more than capable of expressing to Westerners the nuances of tea and the Japanese Tea Ceremony.In The Book of Tea Classic Edition, he discusses such topics as Zen and Taoism, but also the secular aspects of tea and Japanese life. The book emphasizes how Teaism taught the Japanese many things; most importantly, simplicity. Kakuzo argues that tea-induced simplicity affected the culture, art and architecture of Japan.Nearly a century later, Kakuzo's The Book of Tea Classic Edition is still beloved the world over, making it an essential part of any tea enthusiast's collection. Interwoven with a rich history of Japanese tea and its place in Japanese society is a poignant commentary on Asian culture and our ongoing fascination with it, as well as illuminating essays on art, spirituality, poetry, and more. The Book of Tea Classic Edition is a delightful cup of enlightenment from a man far ahead of his time.

    The Archaeology of Knowledge begins at the level of “things aid” and moves quickly to illuminate the connections between knowledge, language, and action in a style at once profound and personal. A summing up of Foucault’s own methodological assumptions, this book is also a first step toward a genealogy of the way we live now. Challenging, at times infuriating, it is an absolutely indispensable guide to one of the most innovative thinkers of our time.

    It deals with the central problems of the human condition--with important questions of free will, morality, life after death, the limits of logic and reason--though often in rather esoteric terms. Now, in The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, readers have the most authoritative and engaging one-volume reference work on philosophy available, offering clear and reliable guidance to the ideas of all notable philosophers from antiquity to the present day, and to the major philosophical systems around the globe, from Confucianism tophenomenology. Here is indeed a world of thought, with entries on idealism and empiricism, ethics and aesthetics, epicureanism and stoicism, deism and pantheism, liberalism and conservativism, logical positivism and existentialism--over two thousand entries in all. The contributors represent a veritable who's whoof modern philosophy, including such eminent figures as Isaiah Berlin, Sissela Bok, Ronald Dworkin, John Searle, Michael Walzer, and W. V. Quine. We read Paul Feyerabend on the history of the philosophy of science, Peter Singer on Hegel, Anthony Kenny on Frege, and Anthony Quinton on philosophyitself. We meet the great thinkers--from Aristotle and Plato, to Augustine and Aquinas, to Descartes and Kant, to Nietzsche and Schopenhauer, right up to contemporary thinkers such as Richard Rorty, Jacques Derrida, Luce Iragaray, and Noam Chomsky (over 150 living philosophers are profiled). Thereare short entries on key concepts such as personal identity and the mind-body problem, major doctrines from utilitarianism to Marxism, schools of thought such as the Heidelberg School or the Vienna Circle, and contentious public issues such as abortion, capital punishment, and welfare. In addition, the book offers short explanations of philosophical terms (qualia, supervenience, iff), puzzles (the Achilles paradox, the prisoner's dilemma), and curiosities (the philosopher's stone, slime). Almost every entry is accompanied by suggestions for further reading, and the book includes both achronological chart of the history of philosophy and a gallery of portraits of eighty eminent philosophers, from Pythagoras and Confucius to Rudolf Carnap and G.E. Moore. And finally, as in all Oxford Companions, the contributors also explore lighter or more curious aspects of the subject, such asDeaths of Philosophers (quite a few were executed, including Socrates, Boethius, Giordano Bruno, and Thomas More) or Nothing so Absurd (referring to Cicero's remark that There is nothing so absurd but some philosopher has said it). Thus the Companion is both informative and a pleasure tobrowse in, providing quick answers to any question, and much intriguing reading for a Sunday afternoon. An indispensable guide and a constant source of stimulation and enlightenment, The Oxford Companion to Philosophy with appeal to everyone interested in abstract thought, the eternal questions, and the foundations of human understandin

    Whether you listen to Mozart or Duke Ellington, Aaron Copland's provocative suggestions for listening to music from his point of view will bring you a deeper appreciation of the most rewarding of all art forms.