Book List - JLF Colorado 2024

In The Age of Waiting, a personal memoir enriched by the history of Buddhism and a re-telling of foundational Buddhist tales, Douglas J. Penick confronts not only his own mortality, but also that of the planet. Penick's eloquent, impassioned investigation transports the reader to distant worlds, while at the same time linking our contemporary reality, with its medical, economic, and ecological emergencies, to an inner landscape which may prove more...

"A follow up to Pico Iyer's essay 'The Joy of Quiet,' The Art of Stillness considers the unexpected adventure of staying put and reveals a counterintuitive truth: The more ways we have to connect, the more we seem desperate to unplug... In this age of constant movement and connectedness, perhaps staying in one place is a more exciting prospect, and a greater necessity than ever before. The Art of Stillness paints a picture of why so many have found...

"From one of our most astute observers of human nature, a far-reaching exploration of Japanese history and culture and a moving meditation on impermanence, mortality, and grief. For years, Pico Iyer has split his time between California and Nara, Japan, where he and his Japanese wife Hiroko have a small home. But when his father-in-law dies suddenly, calling him back to Japan earlier than expected, Iyer begins to grapple with the question we all have...

After thirty-two years in Japan, Pico Iyer can use everything from anime to Oscar Wilde to show how his adopted home is both hauntingly familiar and the strangest place on earth. He draws on readings, reflections, and conversations with Japanese friends to illuminate an unknown place for newcomers, and to give longtime residents a look at their home through fresh eyes. This is a playful and profound guidebook full of surprising, brief, incisive glimpses...

"Book of Queens reaches back centuries to the Persian Empire and a woman disguised as a man, facing an invading army, protected only by light armor and the stallion she sat astride. Mahdavi draws a thread from past to present: from her fearless Iranian grandmother, who guided survivors of domestic violence to independent mountain colonies in Afghanistan where the women, led by a general named Mina, became their country's first line of defense from...

Recounts the life of the Arapaho chief, diplomat, and linguist, describes the experiences of his tribe during the nineteenth century, and clears up misconceptions about the Sand Creek massacre.

Explores humanity's attempts to comprehend the divine by giving it human traits and emotions, and calls for a more expansive understanding of God to develop a more universal spirituality.

The world is waking up to a new reality: wildfires are now seasonal in California, the Northeast is getting less and less snow each winter, and the ice sheets in the Arctic and Antarctica are melting fast. Heat is the first order threat that drives all other impacts of the climate crisis. And as the temperature rises, it is revealing fault lines in our governments, our politics, our economy, and our values. The basic science is not complicated: Stop...

Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. To hyphenate or not to hyphenate has been a central point of controversy since before the imprinting of the first Gutenberg Bible. And yet, the hyphen has persisted, bringing and bridging new words and concepts. Hyphen follows the story of the hyphen from antiquity - "Hyphen" is derived from an ancient Greek word meaning "to tie together" - to...

"An in-depth portrait of the Crusades-era Mediterranean world, and a new understanding of the forces that shaped it. In Infidel Kings and Unholy Warriors, the award-winning scholar Brian Catlos puts us on the ground in the Mediterranean world of 1050-1200. We experience the sights and sounds of the region just as enlightened Islamic empires and primitive Christendom began to contest it. We learn about the siege tactics, theological disputes, and...