Annotation: This is a comprehensive and psychological history of art from a variety of cultures by one of the eminent thinkers of the twentieth century.

A blend of case history, anecdote, history, and spiritual quest, this intimate and fascinating look at the world's oldest and most reclusive monastic order provides a rare understanding of day-to-day Trappist existence.

Chiefly on the partition of Punjab, 1947.

A personal and cultural exploration of silence and its value in our lives—“[an] artful book, mixing autobiography, travel writing, meditation, and essay” (Independent, UK). In her late forties, after a noisy upbringing as one of six children and adulthood as a vocal feminist and mother, Sara Maitland found herself living alone in the country and, to her surprise, falling in love with silence. In this fascinating, intelligent, and beautifully written book, Maitland describes how she began to explore this new love, spending periods of silence in the Sinai desert, the Scottish hills, and a remote cottage on the Isle of Skye. Maitland also delves deep into the rich cultural history of silence, exploring its significance in fairy tale and myth, its importance to the Western and Eastern religious traditions, and its use in psychoanalysis and artistic expression. Her story culminates in her building a hermitage on an isolated moor in Galloway. “Her book is probably unique in its subject, and timely, because good, healing silence is becoming hard to find, and we may not know we need it” (Guardian, UK).

For many of us, one of the most important ways of coping with the death of a close relative is talking about them, telling all who will listen what they meant to us. Yet the Gypsies of central France, the Manuš, not only do not speak of their dead, they burn or discard the deceased's belongings, refrain from eating the dead person's favorite foods, and avoid camping in the place where they died. In Gypsy World, Patrick Williams argues that these customs are at the center of how Manuš see the world and their place in it. The Manuš inhabit a world created by the "Gadzos" (non-Gypsies), who frequently limit or even prohibit Manuš movements within it. To claim this world for themselves, the Manuš employ a principle of cosmological subtraction: just as the dead seem to be absent from Manuš society, argues Williams, so too do the Manuš absent themselves from Gadzo society—and in so doing they assert and preserve their own separate culture and identity. Anyone interested in Gypsies, death rituals, or the formation of culture will enjoy this fascinating and sensitive ethnography.

The poetry of the First World War has determined our perception of the war itself. This volume features poetry drawn from old newspapers and journals, trench and hospital magazines, individual volumes of verse, gift books, postcards, and a manuscript magazine put together by conscientious objectors.

By the author of Planetwalker, The Ragged Edge of Silence takes us to another level of appreciating, through silence, the beauty of the planet and our place in it. John Francis's real and compelling prose forms a tapestry of questions and answers woven from interviews, stories, personal experience, science, and the power of silence through history, including practice by Native American, Hindu, and Buddhist cultures. Through their time-honored traditions and his own experience of communicating silently for 17 years, Francis's practical exercises lay the groundwork for the reader to build constructive silence into everyday life: to learn more about oneself, to set goals and accomplish dreams, to build strong relationships, and to appreciate and be a steward of the Earth. With its amazing human interest element and first-person expertise, this book is energizing and universally instructive.

Behind the Silence is the first in-depth work in any language to explore the diverse perspectives of mainland Chinese regarding induced abortion and fetal life in the context of the world's most ambitious and intrusive family planning program. Through his investigation of public silence, official standpoints, forgotten controversies from the imperial era, popular opinions, women's personal stories, doctors' narratives, and the problem of coerced abortion, Nie Jing-Bao brings to light a surprising range of beliefs concerning fetal life and the morality of abortion, yet finds overall an acceptance of national population policies. China's internal plurality, the author argues, must be taken seriously if the West is to open a fruitful cross-cultural dialogue. Visit our website for sample chapters!

This volume examines the various processes at work in expressing silence and excessive speech in contemporary novels in English, covering the whole spectrum from effusiveness to muteness. Even if in the postmodern episteme language is deemed inadequate for speaking the unspeakable, contemporary authors still rely on voice as a mode of representation and a performative tool, and exploit silence not only as a sign of absence, block or withdrawal, but also as a token of presence and resistance. Logorrhoea and reticence are not necessarily antithetical as compulsive verbosity may work as a smokescreen to sidestep the real issues, while silences and gaps may reveal more than they hide. By submitting their texts to both expansion and retention, hypertrophy and aphasia, writers persistently test the limits of language and its ability to make sense of individual and collective stories. The present volume analyses the complex poetics of silence and speech in fiction from the 1960’s to the present, with special focus on Will Self, Graham Swift, John Fowles, Kazuo Ishiguro, Jenny Diski, Lionel Shriver, Michèle Roberts, Margaret Atwood, Jonathan Safran Foer, Salman Rushdie, Arundhati Roy, Zadie Smith, Jamaica Kincaid, Ryhaan Shah and J.M. Coetzee.