Staff Picks, Popular, Reccommended

$16.00

1. A Chant to Soothe Wild Elephants: A Memoir by Jaed Coffin Six years ago at the age of twenty-one, Jaed Muncharoen Coffin, a half-Thai American man, left New England's priveleged Middlebury College to be ordained as a Buddhist monk in his mother's native village of Panomsarakram--thus fulfilling a familial obligation. While addressing the notions of displacement, ethnic identity, and cultural belonging, "A Chant to Soothe Wild Elephants" chronicles his time at the temple that rain season--receiving alms in the streets in saffron robes: bathing in the canals: learning to meditate in a mountaintop hut; and falling in love with Lek, a beautiful Thai woman who comes to represent the life he can have if he stays. Part armchair travel, part coming-of-age story, this debut work transcends the memoir genre and ushers in a brave new voice in American nonfiction.

1. An Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda Named one of the 100 best spiritual books of the 20th century, Paramahansa Yogananda's remarkable life story takes you on an unforgettable exploration of the world of saints and yogis, science and miracles, death and resurrection. With soul-satisfying wisdom and endearing wit, he illuminates the depest secrets of life and the universe--opening our hearts and minds to the joy, beauty, and unlimited spiritual potentials that exist in the lives of every human being.

$21.95

1. Animal Speak by Ted Andrews This book reveals how to learn the techniques for reading signs and omens in nature so one can be opened to higher perceptions, even prophecy. Includes a dictionary of animal, bird, insect, and reptile symbolism.

$15.00

1. Banker to the Poor by Muhammad Yunus Banker to the Poor is an inspiring memoir of the birth of microcredit, written in a conversational tone that makes it both moving and enjoyable to read. The Grameen Bank is now a $2.5 billion banking enterprise in Bangladesh, while the microcredit model has spread to over 50 countries worldwide, from the U.S. to Papua New Guinea, Norway to Nepal. Ever optimistic, Yunus travels the globe spreading the belief that poverty can be eliminated: "...the poor, once economically empowered, are the most determined fighters in the battle to solve the population problem; end illiteracy; and live healthier, better lives. When policy makers finally realize that the poor are their partners, rather than bystanders or enemies, we will progress much faster that we do today." Dr. Yunus's efforts prove that hope is a global currency. --Shawn Carkonen

$14.95

1. Book of Kin by Vladimir Megre A new visit to Anastasia's glade in Siberian taiga and conversations with his growing son cause Vladimir Megre to take a new look at education, science, history, family and Nature. Through parables and revelatory dialogues and stories Anastasia leads the author and the reader on a shocking re-discovery of the pages of humanity's history that have been distorted or kept secret for thousands of years. This knowledge sheds light on teh causes of war, oppression and violence in the modern world and guides us in preserving the wisdom of our ancestors and passing it over to future generations.

$15.00

1. Breaking the Drought by Stephen Levine Here are poems of the heart that speak directly to our spirit today. Anyone who reads them will be quickened and touched. Both timely and timeless, these visions of grace are like nectar to soul." --Lama Surya Das

$24.95

1. Busting Loose From the Money Game by Robert Scheinfield All your life, without realizing it, you've been playing the money game...and losing. Now, finally, you can win. You were taught certain rules but now you can become better at playing the game. The only way to win The Money Game is to bust loose from it and start playing a new game that works for you. This book will make money a total non-issue in your life and open a portal to a new relationship with money and a radically different way of living.

$15.00

1. Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko "This is the greatest novel in Native American literature. It is one of the greatest novels of any time and place...I teach it and I learn from it and I am continually in awe of its power, beauty, rage, vision, and violence." -Sherman Alexie

$18.00

1. Cosmic Love by Jan Spiller In this powerful guide, astrology expert Jan Spiller shows you how the practical science of astrology can lead to real-life results in the realm of intimate relationships. Moving beyond the commonly known sun-sign profiles, Spiller delves into the meanings and mysteries of your personal North Node--the vital point where the obits pf tje earth, moon, and sun intersect--to help you bring love into your life. For more than thirty years, she has studied how the effects of the Nodes of the Moon help us steer our path, and stop sabotaging relationships. By locating the position of your North Node, which can be found in teh chart provided, and the house in which it falls in an important relationship, Spiller provides you with the astrological, psychological, and spiritual tools to: Learn the secrets to open up to intimacy, move beyond old hurts, allow others to be themselves, experiment with new ways of interacting in important relationships, discover what gifts your partner brings to you and what gifts you bring to your partner, and navigate through the energy of past-life connections.

$18.00

1. Cosmos and Psyche by Richard Tarnas Distinguished philosopher and cultural historian Richard Tarnas demonstrates the existance of an astonishingly consistent correspondence between planetary alignments and the archetypal patterns of human history and biography. Based on thirty years of meticulous research, this brilliant book points to a radical change in our understanding of the cosmos, shining new light on the drama of history and on our own critical age. It opens up a new cosmic horizon that reunites science and religion, intellect and soul, modern reason and ancient wisdom.

$26.00 (hardcover)

1. Creating a World Without Poverty by Muhammad Yunus Economics professor Yunus claims he originally became involved in the poverty issue not as a policy-maker, scholar, or researcher, but because poverty was all around me. With these words he stopped teaching elegant theories and began lending small amounts of money, $40 or less, without collateral, to the poorest women in the world. Thirty-three years later, the Grameen Bank has helped seven million people live better lives building businesses to serve the poor. The bank is solidly profitable, with a 98.6% repayment rate. It inspired the micro-credit movement, which has helped 100 million of the poorest people in the world escape poverty and earned Yunus (Banker to the Poor) a Nobel Peace prize. This volume efficiently recounts the story of microcredit, then discusses Social Business, organizations designed to help people while turning profits. French food giant Danone's partnership to market yogurt in Bangladesh is described in detail, along with 25 other businesses that operate under the Grameen banner. Infused with entrepreneurial spirit and the excitement of a worthy challenge, this book is the opposite of pessimistic recitals of intractable poverty's horrors.

$15.00

1. Freedom in Exile: The Autobiography of the Dalai Lama by Dalai Lama The Dalai Lama's autobiography should leave no one in doubt of his humility and genuine compassion. Written without the slightest hint of pretense, the exiled leader of Tibet recounts his life, from the time he was whisked away from his home in 1939 at the age of 4, to his treacherous escape from Tibet in 1959, to his winning of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989. The backdrop of the story is the 1950 Chinese invasion of Tibet. He calmly relates details of imprisonment, torture, rape, famine, ecological disaster, and genocide that under four decades of Chinese rule have left 1.25 million Tibetans dead and the Tibetan natural and religious landscapes decimated. Yet the Dalai Lama's story is strangely one of hope. This man who prays for four hours a day harbors no ill will toward the Chinese and sees the potential for good everywhere he casts his gaze. Someday, he hopes, all of Tibet will be a zone of peace and the world's largest nature preserve. Such optimism is not naive but rather a result of his daily studies in Buddhist philosophy and his doctrine of Universal Responsibility. Inspiring in every way, Freedom in Exile is both a historical document and a fable of deepest trust in humanity. --Brian Bruya

$18.95

1. Grandmothers Counsel the World by Carol Schaefer “What would the world be like if our grandmothers were in charge?” Ponder that. It’s the first line of the introduction in Grandmothers Counsel the World (Indigenous Women Elders Offer Their Vision for Our Planet). This new book celebrates the value of age. It's a dialog with 13 native women from tribes worldwide talking bout how to bring about world change.Reading this is a calmative. The women’s stories are warm and personal, the photographs compel us to think deeply about beauty, about how lives might be lived better, and what would happen if. A deep lesson lies within the book – when everyone benefits, the individual benefits more.

$26.95

1. I am That: Talks with Sri Nisargadatta by Sri Nisgardatta (translated by) This collection of the timeless teaching of one of the greatest sages of India, Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, regarded by many as a modern spiritual classic, is a testament to the uniqueness of the seer’s life and work. I Am That (now in its ninth printing) continues to draw new audiences and to enlighten anxious seekers for self-realization. Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj was a teacher who did not propound any ideology or religion but gently unwrapped the mystery of the self. His message is simple, direct and yet sublime. I Am That preserves his dialogues with the followers who came from around the world seeking guidance in destroying false identities. The sage’s sole concern was with human suffering and the ending of suffering. IT was his mission to guide the individual o an understanding of his true nature and the timelessness of being. He taught that mind must recognize and penetrate its own state of being, not being his or that, here or there, then or now, but just timeless being.

$21.95 (hardcover)

1. In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto by Michael Pollan Food is the one thing that Americans hate to love and, as it turns out, love to hate. What we want to eat has been ousted by the notion of what we should eat, and it's at this nexus of hunger and hang-up that Michael Pollan poses his most salient question: where is the food in our food? What follows in In Defense of Food is a series of wonderfully clear and thoughtful answers that help us omnivores navigate the nutritional minefield that's come to typify our food culture. Many processed foods vie for a spot in our grocery baskets, claiming to lower cholesterol, weight, glucose levels, you name it. Yet Pollan shows that these convenient "healthy" alternatives to whole foods are appallingly inconvenient: our health has a nation has only deteriorated since we started exiling carbs, fats--even fruits--from our daily meals. His razor-sharp analysis of the American diet (as well as its architects and its detractors) offers an inspiring glimpse of what it would be like if we could (a la Humpty Dumpty) put our food back together again and reconsider what it means to eat well. In a season filled with rallying cries to lose weight and be healthy, Pollan's call to action—"Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."--is a program I actually want to follow. --Anne Bartholomew

$16.95

1. Life: Selected Quotations by Paulo Coelho Everything tells me that I am about to make a wrong decision, but making mistakes is just part of life. What does the world want of me? Does it want me to take no risks, to go back where I came from because i didn't have the courage to say "yes" to life?

$16.00

1. Love Poems From God by Daniel Landinsky In both eastern and western spiritual traditions, it is believed that certain mystics and saints receive a gift from God that make them poetic conduits of the divine, bearers of "love poems from God." Twelve of these timeless spiritual writers, six from the East and six from the West, are beautifully presented in this inspirational volume. Daniel Ladinsky, best known for his gifted translations of the great Sufi poet Hafiz, brings his art to this rich and luminous collection.

$17.95

1. Nature and the Human Soul by Bill Plotkin In his magnum opus more than 25 years in the making, psychologist, eco-therapist, and wilderness guide Plotkin (Soulcraft) brings forth a new model for the whole of human life and spirituality in our world in dire ecological need, spoiled by patho-adolescent society. Beginning fittingly with elder eco-sage Thomas Berry, Plotkin calls us to a fresh circular conception of individual and collective evolutionary life genuinely reconnected to the wild of nature. Using the indigenous template of the four compass directions, his eight stages on the wheel of spiritual development are the Innocent, Explorer, Thespian, Wanderer, Soul Apprentice, Artisan, Master and Sage. The Wheel is a deep-structure portrait of nature-and-soul-oriented cultures, a portrait that encompasses child-raising practices, core values, stages of growth, rites of passage, community organization, and relationship to the greater Earth community, he writes. Leaning heavily on psychology, Plotkin also draws upon a heavenly host of the rich sources that inform a lifetime including poetry, global cultures and much more. Graceful prose is counterbalanced with diagrams and clear chapter structure. Plotkin offers an essential, weighty book for our perilous times.

$16.00

1. Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan Pollan (The Botany of Desire) examines what he calls "our national eating disorder" (the Atkins craze, the precipitous rise in obesity) in this remarkably clearheaded book. It's a fascinating journey up and down the food chain, one that might change the way you read the label on a frozen dinner, dig into a steak or decide whether to buy organic eggs. You'll certainly never look at a Chicken McNugget the same way again.Pollan approaches his mission not as an activist but as a naturalist: "The way we eat represents our most profound engagement with the natural world." All food, he points out, originates with plants, animals and fungi. "[E]ven the deathless Twinkie is constructed out of... well, precisely what I don't know offhand, but ultimately some sort of formerly living creature, i.e., a species. We haven't yet begun to synthesize our foods from petroleum, at least not directly."Pollan's narrative strategy is simple: he traces four meals back to their ur-species. He starts with a McDonald's lunch, which he and his family gobble up in their car. Surprise: the origin of this meal is a cornfield in Iowa. Corn feeds the steer that turns into the burgers, becomes the oil that cooks the fries and the syrup that sweetens the shakes and the sodas, and makes up 13 of the 38 ingredients (yikes) in the Chicken McNuggets.Indeed, one of the many eye-openers in the book is the prevalence of corn in the American diet; of the 45,000 items in a supermarket, more than a quarter contain corn. Pollan meditates on the freakishly protean nature of the corn plant and looks at how the food industry has exploited it, to the detriment of everyone from farmers to fat-and-getting-fatter Americans. Besides Stephen King, few other writers have made a corn field seem so sinister.Later, Pollan prepares a dinner with items from Whole Foods, investigating the flaws in the world of "big organic"; cooks a meal with ingredients from a small, utopian Virginia farm; and assembles a feast from things he's foraged and hunted.This may sound earnest, but Pollan isn't preachy: he's too thoughtful a writer, and too dogged a researcher, to let ideology take over. He's also funny and adventurous. He bounces around on an old International Harvester tractor, gets down on his belly to examine a pasture from a cow's-eye view, shoots a wild pig and otherwise throws himself into the making of his meals. I'm not convinced I'd want to go hunting with Pollan, but I'm sure I'd enjoy having dinner with him. Just as long as we could eat at a table, not in a Toyota.

$24.95

1. Osho Zen Tarot by Osho with illustrations by Ma Deva Padma Traditional Tarot is often used to satisfy a longing to know about past and future. This Tarot focuses on gaining understanding of the here and now. It is a system based on the wisdom of Zen, a wisdom that says events in the outer world simply reflect our own thoughts and feelings, even though we ourselves might be unclear about what those thoughts and feelings are. So it helps us to turn our attention toward outside events so we can find a new clarity of understanding about what is happening in our own inner-most hearts. The conditions and states of mind portrayed by the contemporary images on the cards are all shown as being essentially transitional and transformative. The text in the accompanying book helps to interpret and understand the images in the simple, straightforward, and down to earth language of Zen.

$16.95

1. Pain Free 1-2-3: A Proven Program for Eliminating Chronic Pain NOW! by Jacob Teitelbaum, M.D. The bestselling author of From Fatigued to Fantastic shows chronic pain sufferers how to treat the underlying causes of pain and regain health and vitality Pain Free 1-2-3 demonstrates the four critical components for healing tissue: getting optimum nutrition and sleep, correcting hormonal levels, and eliminating the factors that put stress on the body. Dr. Jacob Teitelbaum provides more than 100 treatments combining both natural and prescription approaches to guide you on how to aid the body in healing, locate the source of their pain, and tailor treatments for maximum effect. “An excellent and powerfully effective part of the standard of practice for treatment of people who suffer from fibromyalgia and myofascial pain syndrome.” --The Journal of the American Academy of Pain Management

$16.95

1. Path of Empowerment by Barbara Marciniak Author Barbara Marciniak's bestseller "Bringers of the Dawn" first introduced us to the Pleiadians--multidimensional beings who claim kinship with us and offer their guidance during our "tumultuous transformation of consciousness." In "Path of Empowerment, Marciniak challenges us to resist teh age-old forces that limit awareness. She presents the Pleiadian keys to opening human consciousness to the unlimited possibilities of "significant living". It offers profound new insights and practical advice on how to creatively meet the challenges of a world on the brink of major change.

$19.95

1. Perfect Brilliant Stillness by David Carse An intimate account of spontaneous spiritual enlightenment and its implications in a life lived beyond the individual self.

$14.95

1. Rebuilding When your Relationship Ends (Third Edition) by Dr. Bruce Fisher and Dr. Robert Alberti Internationally renowned divorce therapist Bruce Fisher and his 700,000-copy bestselling guide, Rebuilding: When Your Relationship Ends, have made the long and difficult process of divorce recovery a lot easier. FisherÆs divorce process rebuilding blocks offer a proven, supportive nineteen-step process for putting oneÆs life back together after divorce. Built on more than two decades of research and practice, Rebuilding reflects feedback from, and the experiences of hundreds of thousands of divorced men and women who have read and used Rebuilding. Clearly the most widely used approach to divorce recovery, FisherÆs rebuilding model has made the divorce process less traumatic, even healthier, for his readers. The third edition, revised and updated with the assistance of psychologist and marriage and family therapist Dr. Robert Alberti, continues BruceÆs tradition of straight-to-the-heart response to the needs of those who are divorcing or divorced.

$13.95

1. Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See See's engrossing novel set in remote 19th-century China details the deeply affecting story of lifelong, intimate friends (laotong, or "old sames") Lily and Snow Flower, their imprisonment by rigid codes of conduct for women and their betrayal by pride and love. While granting immediacy to Lily's voice, See (Flower Net) adroitly transmits historical background in graceful prose. Her in-depth research into women's ceremonies and duties in China's rural interior brings fascinating revelations about arranged marriages, women's inferior status in both their natal and married homes, and the Confucian proverbs and myriad superstitions that informed daily life. Beginning with a detailed and heartbreaking description of Lily and her sisters' foot binding ("Only through pain will you have beauty. Only through suffering will you have peace"), the story widens to a vivid portrait of family and village life. Most impressive is See's incorporation of nu shu, a secret written phonetic code among women—here between Lily and Snow Flower—that dates back 1,000 years in the southwestern Hunan province ("My writing is soaked with the tears of my heart,/ An invisible rebellion that no man can see"). As both a suspenseful and poignant story and an absorbing historical chronicle, this novel has bestseller potential and should become a reading group favorite as well.

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