Three knights set out on a perilous journey to reach the king's castle, but the only one to reach his goal is the one who was wise enough to listen to the song of the king.

Second Edition of the beloved Song of the Summer King, with brand new cover art by illustrator Jennifer Miller!ONE WILL RISE HIGHER . . .Shard is a gryfon in danger. He and other young males of the Silver Isles are old enough to fly, hunt, and fight--old enough to be threats to their ruler, the red gryfon king. In the midst of the dangerous initiation hunt, Shard takes the unexpected advice of a strange she-wolf who seeks him out, and hints that Shard's past isn't all that it seems. To learn his past, Shard must abandon the future he wants and make allies of those the gryfons call enemies.When the gryfon king declares open war on the wolves, it throws Shard's past and uncertain future into the turmoil between. Now with battle lines drawn, Shard must decide whether to fight beside his king . . .or against him.

When itinerant singers from China’s countryside become iconic artists, worlds collide. The lives and performances of these representative singers become sites for conversations between the rural and urban, local and national, folk and elite, and traditional and modern. In Song King: Connecting People, Places, and Past in Contemporary China, Levi S. Gibbs examines the life and performances of “Folksong King of Western China” Wang Xiangrong (b. 1952) and explores how itinerant performers come to serve as representative symbols straddling different groups, connecting diverse audiences, and shifting between amorphous, place-based local, regional, and national identities. Moving from place to place, these border walkers embody connections between a range of localities, presenting audiences with traditional, modern, rural, and urban identities among which to continually reposition themselves in an evolving world. Born in a small mountain village near the intersection of the Great Wall and the Yellow River in a border region with a rich history of migration, Wang Xiangrong was exposed to a wide range of songs as a child. The songs of Wang’s youth prepared him to create a repertoire of region-representing pieces and mediate between regions, nations, and multinational corporations in national and international performances. During the course of a career that included meeting Deng Xiaoping in 1980 and running with the Olympic torch in 2008, Wang’s life, songs, and performances have come to highlight various facets of social identity in contemporary China. Drawing on extensive fieldwork with Wang and other professional folksingers from northern Shaanxi province at weddings, Chinese New Year galas, business openings, and Christmas concerts, Song King argues that songs act as public conversations people can join in on. As song kings and queens fuse personal and collective narratives in performances of iconic songs, they provide audiences with compelling models for socializing personal experience, negotiating a sense of self and group in an ever-changing world.

Huey Long (1893-1935) was one of the most extraordinary American politicians, simultaneously cursed as a dictator and applauded as a benefactor of the masses. A product of the poor north Louisiana hills, he was elected governor of Louisiana in 1928, and proceeded to subjugate the powerful state political hierarchy after narrowly defeating an impeachment attempt. The only Southern popular leader who truly delivered on his promises, he increased the miles of paved roads and number of bridges in Louisiana tenfold and established free night schools and state hospitals, meeting the huge costs by taxing corporations and issuing bonds. Soon Long had become the absolute ruler of the state, in the process lifting Louisiana from near feudalism into the modern world almost overnight, and inspiring poor whites of the South to a vision of a better life. As Louisiana Senator and one of Roosevelt's most vociferous critics, "The Kingfish," as he called himself, gained a nationwide following, forcing Roosevelt to turn his New Deal significantly to the left. But before he could progress farther, he was assassinated in Baton Rouge in 1935. Long's ultimate ambition, of course, was the presidency, and it was doubtless with this goal in mind that he wrote this spirited and fascinating account of his life, an autobiography every bit as daring and controversial as was The Kingfish himself.

Can a twelfth-century Cambodian king's sense of compassion and justice translate to the present?

Mahamudra is the basic meditation practice for many Tibetan Buddhists, particularly of the Kagyu tradition. It is particularly adaptable for modern people, since it involves no rituals and can be incorporated into all daily activities. Saraha's "Song for the King" is a short verse text from classical India that is a basis for the tradition and is widely known in Tibetan Buddhist circles. It is often the basis for teachings given in the West, but there is only one outdated translation of it in print, first published in 1969. Michele Martin has produced a stellar new translation, which is accompanied by a commentary from the well-known teacher Khenchen Thrangu Rinpoche, who is uniquely skilled and concerned with making this method of meditation available to Westerners. While pithy and accessible, the book easily stands up to academic scrutiny, and includes the original Tibetan as well - making it ideal for the popular, scholarly, and Tibetan audiences all at once.

When Jackie Mittoo and Leroy Sibbles migrated from Jamaica to Toronto in the early 1970s, the musicians brought reggae with them, sparking the flames of one of Canada’s most vibrant music scenes. Professional reggae musician and scholar Jason Wilson tells the story of how reggae brought black and white youth together, opening up a cultural dialogue between Jamaican migrants and Canadians along the city’s ethnic frontlines. This underground subculture rebelled against the status quo, broke through the bonds of race, eased the acculturation process, and made bands such as Messenjah and the Sattalites household names for a brief but important time.

The Song of King Gesar is one of the world's great epics, as significant for Tibetans as the Odyssey and Iliad for the ancient Greeks, and as the Ramayana and Mahabarata in India. Passed down in song from one generation to the next, it is sung by Tibetan bards even today. Set partly in ancient Tibet, where evil spirits mingle with the lives of humans, and partly in the modern day, The Song of King Gesar tells of two lives inextricably entwined. Gesar, the youngest and bravest of the gods, has been sent down to the human world to defeat the demons that plague the lives of ordinary people. Jigmed is a young shepherd, who is visited by dreams of Gesar, of gods and of ancient battles while he sleeps. So begins an epic journey for both the shepherd and the king. The wilful child of the gods will become Gesar, the warrior-king of Ling, and will unite the nation of Tibet under his reign. Jigmed will learn to see his troubled country with new eyes, and, as the storyteller chosen by the gods, must face his own destiny.

When progressive rock band King Crimson released Starless and Bible Black in 1974, very few recognized the astonishing virtuosity captured in the album's 11-minute instrumental capstone, "Fracture." Three minutes into the piece, guitarist Robert Fripp begins playing a quiet, non-stop barrage of notes called a "moto perpetuo," an Italian term for "perpetual motion." Fripp's moto perpetuo requires intense right-hand string-skipping, and picking capabilities only a handful of guitarists around the world possess. Musician Anthony Garone was challenged by his father to learn Fracture in 1998. As a 16-year-old who practiced six or more hours every day, he could not understand why he could play other technical pieces of music, but not Fracture. Over the years, he published blog posts and videos about his efforts. Garone kept working in isolated frustration until he enrolled in a week-long guitar instruction course led by Fripp in rural Mexico in 2015. That week was transformative. It was in Mexico that Garone learned the mechanics of Fripp's very unique right-hand technique. To properly play Fracture, Garone had to re-learn how to play guitar, sit, stand, and breathe. It would also require meditation and a new way of using his body. Following many months of remedial guitar practice, Garone re-trained himself to play guitar. In 2016, he was finally able to play small pieces of Fracture without any pain or frustration. He documented his progress, work, and learnings on his Make Weird Music YouTube channel in a series called Failure to Fracture. The videos garnered hundreds of thousands of views and praise from Fripp himself, who wrote "Fracture is impossible to play, cf. Anthony Garone." Failure to Fracture (the book) captures Garone's transformative 22-year journey. The story begins with his time as a teenager developing a friendship with guitar hero Steve Vai in 1996. It ends with video performances of both Fracture and the even more difficult "sequel" composition, FraKctured, written and performed in Fripp's own New Standard Tuning. It is a book about achieving the impossible, overcoming one's limitations, and retraining the mind and body.

In a nightmarish, post-holocaust world, an ancient evil roams a devastated America, gathering the forces of human greed and madness, searching for a child named Swan who possesses the gift of life.