I am Japanese but was born and raised in rural central Utah. At ?rst, my parents were afraid that our involvement with the Church would weaken our grounding in Japanese tradition. As it turned out, it only reinforced my interest in animism, Buddhism, and other aspects of Japanese culture. As a scholar of Japanese culture, I have discovered that Latter-day Saint culture and Mahayana Buddhist culture are similar in many ways, and that the paths to the building up of Zion, on the one hand, and to Zen enlightenment, on the other, are one and the same. The genius of both faith traditions lies in how they push the abstract ideas of salvation down into the world of material practice. Raking sand in a Zen garden reminds us that mortality is similarly a "high maintenance" situation, where constant service is required if we are to grasp our purpose here on earth.

Shortly after accepting the flat earth as a model for the world, I decided to revisit the Book of the Courses of the Heavenly Luminaries to see if my new understanding would somehow mirror what Enoch was sharing as the motion of the sun and moon. As I began to read chapters 71-82, I found to my utter amazement that I was able to grasp those passages. I knew then that the vision that the angel Uriel had shown to Enoch could only be deciphered if one were to imagine Enoch's description of the revolution of the sun and the moon. As seen from above the flat circular plane of the earth as described by Isaiah; and that Enoch must have been taken up to perhaps where Polaris is, centered directly above the North Pole, and while looking down at the backdrop of the earth, was instructed on the motions of both the sun and moon. Without such conception, it is in my opinion impossible to apply these descriptions to the model of the earth as a spherical planet.

Environmental decline, political gridlock, war and rumors of war, decadence, and immorality. The End of the World, Plan B traces the idea of the end, or destruction, of the world through a number of spiritual traditions. It shows that our present understanding of the "end game" has been distorted by a modern emphasis and demand on justice as the ultimate good. As an alternative to this self-destructive approach, Charles Shirō Inouye shows that in these traditions, justice is not the isolated end in itself that we ought strive for; rather it is taught in tandem with its balancing companion: compassion. Plan B is a hopeful alternative to our fears about how things are going.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A candid and moving memoir of how one woman’s pregnancy forced her to confront her definition of how to live a successful life “Slyly ironic, frequently hilarious, [Martha] Beck’s memoir charts the journey from being smart to becoming wise.”—Time This edition includes a new afterword about Adam. From the moment Martha and her husband, John, accidentally conceived their second child, all hell broke loose. They were a couple obsessed with success. After years of matching IQs and test scores with less driven peers, they had two Harvard degrees apiece and were gunning for more. They’d plotted out a future in the most vaunted ivory tower of academe. But when their unborn son, Adam, was diagnosed with Down syndrome, doctors, advisers, and friends in the Harvard community warned them that if they decided to keep the baby, they would lose all hope of achieving their carefully crafted goals. Fortunately, that’s exactly what happened. By the time Adam was born, Martha and John were propelled into a world in which they were forced to redefine everything of value to them, put all their faith in miracles, and trust that they could fly without a net. And it worked. Expecting Adam captures the abject terror and exhilarating freedom of facing impending parenthood, being forced to question one’s deepest beliefs, and rewriting life’s rules.

From the perspective of Protestant America, nineteenth-century Mormons were the victims of a peculiar zealotry, a population deranged––socially, sexually, even racially––by the extravagances of belief they called “religion.” Make Yourselves Gods offers a counter-history of early Mormon theology and practice, tracking the Saints from their emergence as a dissident sect to their renunciation of polygamy at century’s end. Over these turbulent decades, Mormons would appear by turns as heretics, sex-radicals, refugees, anti-imperialists, colonizers, and, eventually, reluctant monogamists and enfranchised citizens. Reading Mormonism through a synthesis of religious history, political theology, native studies, and queer theory, Peter Coviello deftly crafts a new framework for imagining orthodoxy, citizenship, and the fate of the flesh in nineteenth-century America. What emerges is a story about the violence, wild beauty, and extravagant imaginative power of this era of Mormonism—an impassioned book with a keen interest in the racial history of sexuality and the unfinished business of American secularism.

1001 Children's Books You Must Read Before You Grow Up is the perfect introduction to the very best books of childhood: those books that have a special place in the heart of every reader. It introduces a wonderfully rich world of literature to parents and their children, offering both new titles and much-loved classics that many generations have read and enjoyed. From wordless picture books and books introducing the first words and sounds of the alphabet through to hard-hitting and edgy teenage fiction, the titles featured in this book reflect the wealth of reading opportunities for children.Browsing the titles in 1001 Children's Books You Must Read Before You Grow Up will take you on a journey of discovery into fantasy, adventure, history, contermporary life, and much more. These books will enable you to travel to some of the most famous imaginary worlds such as Narnia, Middle Earth, and Hogwart's School. And the route taken may be pretty strange, too. You may fall down a rabbit hole, as Alice does on her way to Wonderland, or go through the back of a wardrobe to reach the snowy wastes of Narnia.

Step into the booth. Check your judgments at the curtain. Close your eyes. Listen: you can hear the voices of the visitors who sat here before you: some of the most twisted, drug-addled, deviant, lonely, lost, brilliant characters ever to be caught on film. What do you have to offer the booth?

Actual letters, lightly edited to be comprehensible to a general audience and to preserve people's privacy, generally reflecting the perspective of a bald Asian American Mormon feminist religious studies China scholar.

"In this remarkable journey, Mark Woods captures the essence of our National Parks: their serenity and majesty, complexity and vitality--and their power to heal." --Ken Burns Many childhood summers, Mark Woods piled into a station wagon with his parents and two sisters and headed to America's national parks. Mark’s most vivid childhood memories are set against a backdrop of mountains, woods, and fireflies in places like Redwood, Yosemite, and Grand Canyon national parks. On the eve of turning fifty and a little burned-out, Mark decided to reconnect with the great outdoors. He'd spend a year visiting the national parks. He planned to take his mother to a park she'd not yet visited and to re-create his childhood trips with his wife and their iPad-generation daughter. But then the unthinkable happened: his mother was diagnosed with cancer, given just months to live. Mark had initially intended to write a book about the future of the national parks, but Lassoing the Sun grew into something more: a book about family, the parks, the legacies we inherit and the ones we leave behind.