He set out to make his utopian dream come true-Bronson Alcott, his wife and four daughters, and an odd assortment of friends who knew more about philosophy than they did about farming. Would their experience at Fruitlands last through the hard New England winter? Transcendentalist commune is for readers of all ages who love Alcott, history, or just a good story told with humor and sensitivity.

The word dharma, originally from the Sanskrit, refers to the inherent, unchanging nature of something – sugar’s dharma is to be sweet, water’s dharma is to be wet, and fire’s dharma is to emit heat and light. Dharma also refers to our natural duty. We humans have ordinary dharma and an ultimate dharma that relates to who we are at soul level. That dharma requires that we ask existential questions and then seek ultimate answers – questions such as Who am I? Why am I here? and What is my ultimate purpose? Dharma, the Way of Transcendence is a compilation of lectures on human dharma given by His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada in 1972 as he toured India. Here he teaches that the dharma of all humans and every other living embodied soul – is service. No one can exist for a moment without serving someone or something else, even if it’s only the mind and senses. So the question is, whom or what can we serve if we want to be truest to ourselves?

With a new introduction, acclaimed director and screenwriter Paul Schrader revisits and updates his contemplation of slow cinema over the past fifty years. Unlike the style of psychological realism, which dominates film, the transcendental style expresses a spiritual state by means of austere camerawork, acting devoid of self-consciousness, and editing that avoids editorial comment. This seminal text analyzes the film style of three great directors—Yasujiro Ozu, Robert Bresson, and Carl Dreyer—and posits a common dramatic language used by these artists from divergent cultures. The new edition updates Schrader’s theoretical framework and extends his theory to the works of Andrei Tarkovsky (Russia), Béla Tarr (Hungary), Theo Angelopoulos (Greece), and Nuri Bilge Ceylan (Turkey), among others. This key work by one of our most searching directors and writers is widely cited and used in film and art classes. With evocative prose and nimble associations, Schrader consistently urges readers and viewers alike to keep exploring the world of the art film.

A portrait of five Concord, Massachusetts, writers whose works were at the center of mid-nineteenth-century American thought and literature evaluates their interconnected relationships, influence on each other's works, and complex beliefs.

In nineteenth-century Boston, amidst the popular lecturing of Ralph Waldo Emerson and the discussion groups led by Margaret Fuller, sat a remarkable young woman, Caroline Healey Dall (1822-1912): transcendentalist, early feminist, writer, reformer, and, perhaps most importantly, active diarist. During the seventy-five years that Dall kept a diary, she captured all the fascinating details of her sometimes agonizing personal life, and she also wrote about all the major figures who surrounded her. Her diary, filling forty-five volumes, is perhaps the longest running diary ever written by any American and the most complete account of a nineteenth-century woman's life. In Daughter of Boston, scholar Helen Deese has painstakingly combed through these diaries and created a single fascinating volume of Dall's observations, judgments, descriptions, and reactions.

Sophie Germain overcame gender stigmas and a lack of formal education to prove that for all prime exponents less than 100 Case I of Fermat's Last Theorem holds. Hidden behind a man's name, her brilliance as mathematician was first discovered by three of the greatest scholars of the eighteenth century, Lagrange, Gauss, and Legendre. In Sophie's Diary, Germain comes to life through a fictionalized journal that intertwines mathematics with historical descriptions of the brutal events that took place in Paris between 1789 and 1793. This format provides a plausible perspective of how a young Sophie could have learned mathematics on her own—both fascinated by numbers and eager to master tough subjects without a teacher's guidance. Her passion for mathematics is integrated into her personal life as an escape from societal outrage. Sophie's Diary is suitable for a variety of readers—both young and old, mathematicians and novices—who will be inspired and enlightened on a field of study made easy, as told through the intellectual and personal struggles of an exceptional young woman.

Originally published: New York: Times Books, 1979.

Southeast of San Francisco lies the Diablo Range-familiar to many, but little-known. Though much has been written about the California landscape, the Diablo Range has largely been overlooked. Wildlife biologist Joseph Belli, a lifelong resident of the region, seeks to change that. In The Diablo Diary, he presents twenty-five natural history essays focusing on the creatures, controversies, and threats to this sizable tract of de facto wilderness on the edge of the Bay Area. Writings on Mountain Lions, California Condors, and Tule Elk share space with pieces on California Tiger Salamanders, San Joaquin Kit Foxes, and horned lizards. Their stories often address larger environmental issues: habitat loss, the threat posed by invasive species, the consequences of water development, and policy decisions, both local and national. Along with essays on animals are human stories, ruminations on isolation, mortality, and coping with change, as well as humorous writings. Written with the eye of a scientist, the zeal of an activist, and the soul of an artist, The Diablo Diary is a fascinating study of an oft-overlooked mountain range and its inhabitants.