To live and die in L.A. Zen Moses is either having a bad day or bad karma. Her cat is dead. The IRS wants to talk to her. And she just found her long-lost cousin's body bound to a beer keg at her favorite neighborhood bar. It's enough to drive even a tough private investigator to drink, smoke a good cigar, and find a firm male shoulder to cry on. But cynical, wise-cracking Zen is both a loner and survivor. At thirty-three she's already beat a bout with cancer-- and soon she's being offered big bucks to find a talk-show celebrity's missing father. It seems like an easy job until Zen finds out she's just one step ahead of a hit man. Now Zen's professional and private lives are converging into a world of murder and gunplay...and the sound of one hand clapping may end up being bang bang.

Winner of the German Crime Fiction Award Louise Boni drinks too much. The maverick inspector in Germany's Black Forest police squad is haunted by the mistakes she's made and the people she's lost. While she's dreading the approach of another lonely winter weekend, a call from her supervisor draws her into the most bizarre case of her career. A badly beaten Japanese monk is roaming the snowy Freiburg region with little more than sandals and a begging bowl, and the frightened holy man appears to be fleeing an unseen danger. Now Boni must battle both skeptical police authorities and her personal demons as her investigation reveals a hidden crime ring as well as a spiritual opportunity to transform her life. The first book in the Black Forest Investigation series, Zen and the Art of Murder is "a surprising and genuinely shocking case." — The Sunday Times (U.K.)

The writers and artists described in this book are joined by a desire to embrace 'Eastern' aesthetics as a means of redeeming 'Western' technoculture. The assumption they all share is that at the core of modern Western culture there lies an originary and all-encompassing philosophical error - and that Asian art offers a way out of that awful matrix. That desire, this book attempts to demonstrate, has informed Anglo- and even Asian-American debates about technology and art since the late nineteenth century and continues to skew our responses to our own technocultural environment.

In the years after World War II, Westerners and Japanese alike elevated Zen to the quintessence of spirituality in Japan. Pursuing the sources of Zen as a Japanese ideal, Shoji Yamada uncovers the surprising role of two cultural touchstones: Eugen Herrigel’s Zen in the Art of Archery and the Ryoanji dry-landscape rock garden. Yamada shows how both became facile conduits for exporting and importing Japanese culture. First published in German in 1948 and translated into Japanese in 1956, Herrigel’s book popularized ideas of Zen both in the West and in Japan. Yamada traces the prewar history of Japanese archery, reveals how Herrigel mistakenly came to understand it as a traditional practice, and explains why the Japanese themselves embraced his interpretation as spiritual discipline. Turning to Ryoanji, Yamada argues that this epitome of Zen in fact bears little relation to Buddhism and is best understood in relation to Chinese myth. For much of its modern history, Ryoanji was a weedy, neglected plot; only after its allegorical role in a 1949 Ozu film was it popularly linked to Zen. Westerners have had a part in redefining Ryoanji, but as in the case of archery, Yamada’s interest is primarily in how the Japanese themselves have invested this cultural site with new value through a spurious association with Zen.

Mindfulness, yoga, Tantra, Zen, martial arts, karma, feng shui, Ayurveda. Eastern ideas and practices associated with Asian religions and spirituality have been accommodated to a global setting as both a spiritual/religious and a broader cultural phenomenon. ‘Eastern spirituality’ is present in organized religions, the spiritual New Age market, arts, literature, media, therapy, and health care but also in public institutions such as schools and prisons. Eastspirit: Transnational Spirituality and Religious Circulation in East and West describes and analyses such concepts, practices and traditions in their new ‘Western’ and global contexts as well as in their transformed expressions and reappropriations in religious traditions and individualized spiritualities ‘back in the East’ within the framework of mutual interaction and circulation, regionally and globally.

"In this suggestive and delightful book we will go around a road full of strange characters that will show us, at first hand, what Zen is, what it is about, and its amazing connection to the art and pleasure of wine tasting. Considering its deep roots, which go back to the dawn of the history of humanity, it will reveal us how two worlds apparently different, but complementing and enriching each other in an almost magical way, merge. As the renowned chef Ferran Adrià depicts in his prologue, through Zen philosophy, using its millenary knowledge and some of its techniques (such as zazen), I. M. Maciel’s work reveals the subtle connection between two forms of spirit, two orbs, different but with numerous and suggestive contact points. It is in this way how the reader will discover in its pages the seven precepts that will help him to enjoy, even more than he expected, the wonderful experience of wine tasting; but also to pay attention to the little things that we usually overlook, which hide inside the secret of real happiness".

These new essays comprise a critical analysis of present-day crime fiction and nonfiction works set in Italy (all of which are available in English). The writers discussed range from Donna Leon and Michael Dibdin to Leonardo Sciascia and Andrea Camilleri. Essays also deal with nonfiction by Roberto Saviano and Douglas Preston. An emerging theme is the corruption of Italian police and judiciary officials and the frustration of officers and politicians trying to work ethically within a flawed system. Many of the works discussed show the struggle of the honest characters to find at least a limited justice for the victims.

Zen and the Art of Local History is an engaging, interactive conversation that conveys the exciting nature of local history. Divided into six major themes the book covers the scope and breadth of local history: • Being a Local Historian • Topics and Sources • Staying Relevant • Getting it Right • Writing History • History Organizations Each chapter features one of Carol Kammen’s memorable editorials from History News. Her editorial is a “call.” Each is followed by a response from one of more than five dozen prominent players in state and local history. These Respondents include local and public historians, archivists, volunteers, and history professionals across the kaleidoscopic spectrum of local history. Among this group are Katherine Kane, Robert “Bob” Richmond, Charlie Bryan, and Cinnamon Catlin-Legutko. The result is a series of dialogues on important topics in the field of local history. This interactivity of these conversations makes Zen and the Art of Local History a unique offering in the public history field.

A novel about the causes of happiness and the secrets of enlightenment and Zen, set in the Zen Forest.