The author, a computer science professor diagnosed with terminal cancer, explores his life, the lessons that he has learned, how he has worked to achieve his childhood dreams, and the effect of his diagnosis on him and his family.

Explores language and mysticism, Buddhism and Zen, Christianity, comparative religion, psychedelics, and psychology and psychotherapy. To commemorate the 2015 centenary of the birth of Alan Watts (1915–1973), Peter J. Columbus and Donadrian L. Rice have assembled a much-needed collection of Watts’s scholarly essays and lectures. Compiled from professional journals, monographs, scholarly books, conferences, and symposia proceedings, the volume sheds valuable light on the developmental arc of Watts’s thinking about language and mysticism, Buddhism and Zen, Christianity, comparative religion, psychedelics, and psychology and psychotherapy. This definitive collection challenges Watts’s reputation as a “popularizer” or “philosophical entertainer,” revealing his concerns to be much more expansive and transdisciplinary than is suggested by the parochial “Zen Buddhist” label commonly affixed to his writings. The editors’ authoritative introduction elucidates contemporary perspectives on Watts’s life and work, and supports a bold rethinking of his contributions to psychology, philosophy, and religion. “This excellent volume is important in establishing Watts as perhaps the most important Western thinker and writer on Eastern religions and philosophy, as well as comparative religions, of the twentieth century.” — John W. Traphagan, author of Rethinking Autonomy: A Critique of Principlism in Biomedical Ethics

Sir John Soane: The Royal Academy Lectures contains the full text of Soane's letters, carefully edited by David Watkin. It is a revised and abridged edition of his award-winning book Sir John Soane: Enlightenment Thought and the Royal Academy Lectures. In his introduction to this new volume, Watkin explains the significance of Soane's approach to architectural history and theory, as expressed in the lectures delivered from 1810-1820 as Professor of Architecture at the Royal Academy. They are accompanied by a selection of the watercolors that Soane prepared as illustrations.

The topical issues debated in this volume include the patenting of AIDS drugs, the future pensions crisis, Britain's universities, and Pan-Islam.There are studies of Shakespeare, Pope, Montaigne, Robert Graves, and William Faulkner. And there are lectures on the Inquisition, empires in history, and the journey towards spiritual fulfilment.