What would happen if most of the people in America became deaf almost overnight? Chaos? Financial collapse? Anarchy? None of the above? "MindField" is a thrill ride with a message; a premise torn right out of today's headlines. A terrorist cell ignites an aerosol dispersion of what is thought to be deadly bacteria-spinal meningitis. It quickly spreads from a small town in Montana to nearly 30 states, eventually affecting more than three million people-an epidemic of nation-threatening proportions. However, the problem isn't death-it's deaf. The physical symptoms of the disease disappear after three weeks, the only remaining tragedy is all those who are stricken become permanently deaf-a common side effect of spinal meningitis. The United States is turned inside out, now a country where millions of the inhabitants can't hear. An underground government is formed deep beneath the NORAD facilities in Colorado. A catastrophe of unimaginable proportions-or is it? "MindField" is a fast paced, plot driven suspense novel with a pleasant surprising, and incredibly potent message about the way we might live our lives if we "all" had to listen with our eyes and hearts, and how the world might be a much better place for it.

Gregory Corso's an aphoristic poet, and a poet of ideas. What modern poets write with such terse calrity that their verses stick in the mind without effort? Certainly Yeats, Pound, Williams, Eliot, Kerouac, Creeley, Dylan, & Corso have that quality. --from the Preface titled "On Corso's Virutes," by Alan Ginsberg

The realization that the fundamental building blocks of our world consist of brains rather than nations, electrons, or even DNA, is ushering in a 'neurocentric' revolution that will change how we think about everything from morality to stock markets, from gods to ourselves.

Here is a multidimensional playland of ideas from the world's most eccentric Nobel-Prize winning scientist. Kary Mullis is legendary for his invention of PCR, which redefined the world of DNA, genetics, and forensic science. He is also a surfer, a veteran of Berkeley in the sixties, and perhaps the only Nobel laureate to describe a possible encounter with aliens. A scientist of boundless curiosity, he refuses to accept any proposition based on secondhand or hearsay evidence, and always looks for the "money trail" when scientists make announcements. Mullis writes with passion and humor about a wide range of topics: from global warming to the O. J. Simpson trial, from poisonous spiders to HIV, from scientific method to astrology. Dancing Naked in the Mind Field challenges us to question the authority of scientific dogma even as it reveals the workings of an uncannily original scientific mind.

Using information from the cutting edge of modern science, Peake presents startling evidence that the inner worlds of our mystics and shamans are as real, or possibly even more real, than the reality we experience in waking life. As his starting point, Peake examines the widespread historical belief that the mid-brain’s pine-cone shaped pineal gland activates the third eye described by mystics and seers. Through careful analysis of ancient religious texts and artifacts, he gives evidence that the spiritual properties of the pineal gland have been embedded in myths and cultures across the globe. (Why else would the Buddha so often be found wearing a pine cone hat?) Peake then shows that it is through this small organ that we experience lucid dreaming, out-of-body experiences, hypnagogic imagery, near-death experiences, astral travel and the kundalini experience. The book ends with the mind-blowing conclusion that all living beings are one unitary consciousness experiencing itself subjectively.

A dizzying array of popular psychology books, articles, and promotion campaigns tout a multitude of remedies for psychological problems. If you or someone you know is seeking therapy, this excellent reference book will provide needed guidance for navigating the mental health maze.

Mind Fields was originally conceived as a collection of Jacek Yerka's paintings, but when Harlan Ellison was approached to write the introduction, he was so overcome that instead he penned a short story for each piece. The result of this synergistic melding of talents, Mind Fields shows two masters at their best. Each of the nearly three dozen stories in this volume is completely unlike any of the others, and together they contain a rich panoply of pathos, humor, and wonder. Produced in a beautiful cloth edition worthy of the art within, Mind Fields is a unique item and a must for any Ellison fan.

When bodies start turning up in an unexplained series of murders, Kellen O'Reilly, a one-time participant in psychiatric experiments, begins having flashbacks that may lead him to the identity of the killer.

Two millennia after World War III, in the New Order year 1901 AE, StarProbe Tech Lt. Anen Kel was searching for a resolution to the interstellar communications problem known as the Anomaly when his intercept beams awoke a comatose alien creature drifting in high orbit over earth. As Kel and his android companion, CR, ultimately converse with the spaceborn being who calls himself the Spherit, the alien realizes that he has been an unconscious time traveler since he was struck by a nuclear blast during WWIII. He has been awakened in what is for him the 42nd century—but with his 21st century viewpoints still intact. Until he can begin to understand how the earthworld has come to be wholly dominated by the techno-philosophy of O Theory, nothing of this braver new world will ever make sense to him—

Folk art is one of the American South's most significant areas of creative achievement, and this comprehensive yet accessible reference details that achievement from the sixteenth century through the present. This volume of The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture explores the many forms of aesthetic expression that have characterized southern folk art, including the work of self-taught artists, as well as the South's complex relationship to national patterns of folk art collecting. Fifty-two thematic essays examine subjects ranging from colonial portraiture, Moravian material culture, and southern folk pottery to the South's rich quilt-making traditions, memory painting, and African American vernacular art, and 211 topical essays include profiles of major folk and self-taught artists in the region.