For half of the 20th century, Huston Smith covered the world seeking answers to the supreme questions in life: Why are we here? What do we really want? What does it all mean?From humble village temples to glinting mosques and towering cathedrals, Smith has uncovered the spiritual treasures buried beneath thousands of years of historical and scientific distortions. Now, in his own words, Smith shares the true story of his epic search for the seeds of wisdom on Religions of the World...

Westerners look to science to explain the way things are. Yet science often overlooks something essential to life: the human spirit. Although spirit cannot possibly be seen through the lens of a microscope, captured on a video camera or explained through scientific experiments, few of us would deny that it exists. Huston Smith breathes new life into our search for truth.

Over eight decades after his birth to missionary parents in China, Huston Smith now finds himself in an age of disbelief that has led to a spiritual crisis unlike any that history has previously known.On The Big Picture, Smith draws from his lifetime of scholarship to describe for us the nature of ultimate reality. His description combines the most up-to-date findings of science with the enduring truths of the world's greatest religions, an alignment that offers firm grounds for ho...

The life of Huston Smith reads like an adventure novel. One of the foremost religious scholars of our time, Smith lived in a missionary household in China, monasteries in Japan, and a sweat lodge in North America. Introduced to Vedanta through spiritual pioneers Aldous Huxley and Gerald Heard, he engaged many of the contemporary wisdom giants.

The story of Islam is one we urgently need to hear. Now Huston Smith, the legendary authority on comparative religions, summons a lifetime of scholarship and insight to offer this welcome listener's guide to the most persistently misunderstood religion in the world.Smith takes us back to Islam's founding lineage, revealing its inspiration in Greek philosophy and its common roots with both Judaism and Christianity. With so much in common, most of all the precept of one all-powerful ...

A new wind is blowing ... and the future is radically open, says the eminent philosopher, professor and author of the now-classic Religions of Man (republished as The World's Religions, HarperSanFrancisco 1992), as he recalls his spiritual roots and points to a new balance between the worlds of science and mysticism.

THE POWER OF LOVE is an award-winning chronicle of the soul's quest. Dr. Fran Grace, a professor of religion, narrates her life journey and describes her personal encounters with some of the century's most memorable spiritual figures. Reviewers say it "is a masterpiece," "splendid and moving narrative," "reveals love in its many facets," "feeds the heart and soul," "awakens the mind." At age 15, the author had a mystical experience that nearly shattered her. She joined a fundamentalist sec...

In Practicing Democracy, eleven historians challenge conventional narratives of democratization in the early United States, offering new perspectives on the period between the ratification of the Constitution and the outbreak of the Civil War. The essays in this collection address critical themes such as the origins, evolution, and disintegration of party competition, the relationship between political parties and popular participation, and the place that parties occupied within t...