The historical achievements of religious belief have been large and well chronicled. But what about the accomplishments of those who have challenged religion? Traveling from classical Greece to twenty-first century America, Imagine There's No Heaven explores the role of disbelief in shaping Western civilization. At each juncture common themes emerge: by questioning the role of gods in the heavens or the role of a God in creating man on earth, nonbelievers help move science forwar...

**WINNER, Sperber Prize 2018, for the best biography of a journalist**The first and definitive biography of an audacious adventurer—the most famous journalist of his time—who more than anyone invented contemporary journalism.Tom Brokaw says: "Lowell Thomas so deserves this lively account of his legendary life. He was a man for all seasons.""Mitchell Stephens's The Voice of America is a first-rate and much-needed biogr...

For a century and a half, journalists made a good business out of selling the latest news or selling ads next to that news. Now that news pours out of the Internet and our mobile devices—fast, abundant, and mostly free—that era is ending. Our best journalists, Mitchell Stephens argues, instead must offer original, challenging perspectives—not just slightly more thorough accounts of widely reported events. His book proposes a new standard: "wisdom journalism," an amalgam of the more rarifie...

The classic guide for Zen students pursuing the true way."Somebody comes into the Zen center with a lighted cigarette, walks up to the Buddha-statue, blows smoke in its face and drops ashes on its lap. You are standing there. What can you do?" This is a problem that Zen Master Seung Sahn was fond of posing to his American students who attended his Zen centers.Dropping Ashes on the Buddha is a delightful, irreverent, and often hilariously funny livi...

This "touching and funny" book by a Jewish Buddhist "giv[es] a sense of the richness that comes with opening to more than one way of spiritual observance" ( San Francisco Chronicle)."How can you be a Buddhist and a Jew?" It's a question Sylvia Boorstein, author of It's Easier Than You Think, has heard many times. Can an authentic Jewish faith be wedded with Buddhist meditation practice? In this landmark national bestseller, the es...

A stunning new translation of the classic tale of the fall of Troy from one of the world's finest translators. If you enjoyed THE SONG OF ACHILLES, discover the original and the best...Man seduces another's wife then kidnaps her. The husband and his brother get a gang together to steal her back and take revenge. The woman regrets being seduced and wants to escape, whilst the man's entourage resent the position they have been placed in. Yet the battle lines have bee...

'A powerful translation' The Telegraph'As narrative verse, this Gilgamesh entrances and enthrals.' Independent'Stephen Mitchell's Gilgamesh is a wonderful version' Harold BloomVivid, enjoyable and comprehensible, the poet and pre-eminent translator Stephen Mitchell makes the oldest epic poem in the world accessible for the first time.Gilgamesh is a born leader, but in an att...

More than a hundred years after his birth, Pablo Neruda’s poetry is as vital and beloved as ever.This collection presents fifty of the most essential poems by one of history’s greatest poets in dynamic new translations, the result of an unprecedented collaboration among a team of poets, translators, and the world’s leading Neruda scholars.A definitive selection that draws from the entire breadth of Neruda’s various styles, themes, and periods, The Essential Neruda ...

"This miracle of a book, perhaps the most beautiful group of poetic translations this century has ever produced," (Chicago Tribune) should stand as the definitive English language version.

The Bhagavad Gita is universally acknowledged as one of the world's literary and spiritual masterpieces. It is the core text of the Hindu tradition, one that has been translated into more than two hundred English editions. Stephen Mitchell—the acclaimed translator of Pablo Neruda, Rainer Maria Rilke, and the Tao Te Ching—has produced a definitive version of The Bhagavad Gita for our time. Mitchell's translation sings with the clarity, the vigor, and the intensity...

The ten letters collected here are arguably the most famous and beloved letters of our century. Written when Rainer Maria Rilke was himself still a young man with most of his greatest work before him, they are addressed to a student who had sent Rilke some of his work, asking for advice about becoming a writer. The two never met, but over a period of several years Rilke wrote him these ten letters, which have been enjoyed by hundreds of thousands of readers for what Stephen Mitchell calls ...

The first three volumes of The Best Horror of the Year have been widely praised for their quality, variety, and comprehensiveness. Editor Ellen Datlow has now explored the entirety of the diverse horror market, distilling it into the fourth anthology in the series and providing an overview of the year in terror.Fear is the oldest human emotion, the most primal. We like to think we're civilized. We tell ourselves we're not afraid. And every year, we skim our fingers across ...