• Featuring artwork from the 32+ volume manga series - Vagabond is on Japan’s top ten best seller’s list with over 100 million volumes in print. • Vagabond has sold over 22 million copies worldwide! (Not including Japan’s sales). • Vagabond is based on the novel, Musashi by Eiji Yoshikawa. Originally written in the early 40’s, Yoshikawa’s fictional account became so well known that his version has blurred fact from fiction. • VIZ Media is currently releasing the English translated edition of Vagabond only three months apart from the Japanese release! • The popularity of Vagabond has been attributed for the reason NHK produced its period drama TV series based on Yohikawa’s novel. • There have been 6 films and 2 TV series based on Miyamoto Musashi’s life. • Inoue received the 2000 Media Arts award for manga from the Japanese Ministry of Culture and the Kodansha award for best manga for his work on Vagabond. • Nominated for 2003 Eisner Award in the category for Best Writer/Artist! • "...reads like an Akira Kurosawa film captured on the printed page." -Cliff Biggers, Comic Buyer's Guide • Inoue has personally created licensed merchandise on a small scale, so that the products will meet his standards of quality. • Inoue’s previous series Slam Dunk has over 100 million copies in print worldwide. • Everything Takehiko Inoue has published has hit the top ten sales list in Japan. Sumi presents Inoue's magnificent pen and brush work in black and white. It also includes a behind the scenes look at Vagabond with rough sketches and photos of Inoue's studio. In a recent interview, Takehiko Inoue claimed that in his first major follow-up to Slam Dunk, he wanted to delve as deeply as possible into visual artistry. The result was the incredibly realized world of Vagabond, the Sistine Chapel of manga. This artbook captures the very best of Inoue's work, with images hand-selected by Inoue himself. Not one to skimp on reproduction and image quality, Inoue also hand selected the specific printer. Sumi presents Inoue's magnificent pen and brush work in black and white. It also includes a behind the scenes look at Vagabond with rough sketches and photos of Inoue's studio.

• Featuring artwork from the 32+ volume manga series - Vagabond is on Japan’s top ten best seller’s list with over 100 million volumes in print. • Vagabond has sold over 22 million copies worldwide! (Not including Japan’s sales). • Vagabond is based on the novel, Musashi by Eiji Yoshikawa. Originally written in the early 40’s, Yoshikawa’s fictional account became so well known that his version has blurred fact from fiction. • VIZ Media is currently releasing the English translated edition of Vagabond only three months apart from the Japanese release! • The popularity of Vagabond has been attributed for the reason NHK produced its period drama TV series based on Yohikawa’s novel. • There have been 6 films and 2 TV series based on Miyamoto Musashi’s life. • Inoue received the 2000 Media Arts award for manga from the Japanese Ministry of Culture and the Kodansha award for best manga for his work on Vagabond. • Nominated for 2003 Eisner Award in the category for Best Writer/Artist! • "...reads like an Akira Kurosawa film captured on the printed page." -Cliff Biggers, Comic Buyer's Guide • Inoue has personally created licensed merchandise on a small scale, so that the products will meet his standards of quality. • Inoue’s previous series Slam Dunk has over 100 million copies in print worldwide. • Everything Takehiko Inoue has published has hit the top ten sales list in Japan. Water features Inoue’s masterful work in color. It also highlights artwork created specifically for this volume. In a recent interview, Takehiko Inoue claimed that in his first major follow-up to Slam Dunk, he wanted to delve as deeply as possible into visual artistry. The result was the incredibly realized world of Vagabond, the Sistine Chapel of manga. This artbook captures the very best of Inoue's work, with images hand-selected by Inoue himself. Not one to skimp on color and image quality, Inoue also hand selected the specific printer. Water features Inoue’s masterful work in color. It also highlights artwork created specifically for this volume.

"Bibliographical notes": pages 206-[207] Foreword.--Introduction: The vagabond element in modern literature--I. William Hazlitt.--II. Thomas De Quincey.--III. George Borrow.--IV. Henry D. Thoreau.--V. Robert Louis Stevenson.--VI. Richard Jefferies.--VII. Walt Whitman.

The classic samurai novel about the real exploits of the most famous swordsman. Miyamoto Musashi was the child of an era when Japan was emerging from decades of civil strife. Lured to the great Battle of Sekigahara in 1600 by the hope of becoming a samurai—without really knowing what it meant—he regains consciousness after the battle to find himself lying defeated, dazed and wounded among thousands of the dead and dying. On his way home, he commits a rash act, becomes a fugitive and brings life in his own village to a standstill—until he is captured by a weaponless Zen monk. The lovely Otsu, seeing in Musashi her ideal of manliness, frees him from his tortuous punishment, but he is recaptured and imprisoned. During three years of solitary confinement, he delves into the classics of Japan and China. When he is set free again, he rejects the position of samurai and for the next several years pursues his goal relentlessly, looking neither to left nor to right. Ever so slowly it dawns on him that following the Way of the Sword is not simply a matter of finding a target for his brute strength. Continually striving to perfect his technique, which leads him to a unique style of fighting with two swords simultaneously, he travels far and wide, challenging fighters of many disciplines, taking nature to be his ultimate and severest teacher and undergoing the rigorous training of those who follow the Way. He is supremely successful in his encounters, but in the Art of War he perceives the way of peaceful and prosperous governance and disciplines himself to be a real human being He becomes a reluctant hero to a host of people whose lives he has touched and been touched by. And, inevitably, he has to pit his skill against the naked blade of his greatest rival. Musashi is a novel in the best tradition of Japanese story telling. It is a living story, subtle and imaginative, teeming with memorable characters, many of them historical. Interweaving themes of unrequited love, misguided revenge, filial piety and absolute dedication to the Way of the Samurai, it depicts vividly a world Westerners know only vaguely. Full of gusto and humor, it has an epic quality and universal appeal. The novel was made into a three-part movie by Director Hiroshi Inagai. For more information, visit the Shopping area

INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER • With a new foreword by Tim Ferriss • “Vagabonding easily remains in my top-10 list of life-changing books. Why? Because one incredible trip, especially a long-term trip, can change your life forever. And Vagabonding teaches you how to travel (and think), not just for one trip, but for the rest of your life.”—Tim Ferriss, from the foreword There’s nothing like vagabonding: taking time off from your normal life—from six weeks to four months to two years—to discover and experience the world on your own terms. In this one-of-a-kind handbook, veteran travel writer Rolf Potts explains how anyone armed with an independent spirit can achieve the dream of extended overseas travel. Now completely revised and updated, Vagabonding is an accessible and inspiring guide to • financing your travel time • determining your destination • adjusting to life on the road • working and volunteering overseas • handling travel adversity • re-assimilating back into ordinary life Updated for our ever-changing world, Vagabonding is an indispensable guide for the modern traveler.

A century after the Martian war of independence, a group of kids are sent to Earth as delegates from Mars, but when they return home, they are caught between the two worlds, unable to reconcile the beauty and culture of Mars with their experiences on Earth in this “thoughtful debut” (Kirkus Reviews) from Hugo Award–winning author Hao Jingfang. This “masterful narrative” (Booklist, starred review) is set on Earth in the wake of a second civil war…not between two factions in one nation, but two factions in one solar system: Mars and Earth. In an attempt to repair increasing tensions, the colonies of Mars send a group of young people to live on Earth to help reconcile humanity. But the group finds itself with no real home, no friends, and fractured allegiances as they struggle to find a sense of community and identity trapped between two worlds.

Everett Ruess, the young poet and artist who disappeared into the desert canyonlands of Utah in 1934, has become widely known posthumously as the spokesman for the spirit of the high desert. Many have been inspired by his intense search for adventure, leaving behind the amenities of a comfortable life. His search for ultimate beauty and oneness with nature is chronicled in this remarkable collection of letters to family and friends.

“Thought-provoking, encouraging, and inspiring” (Gretchen Rubin) reflections on the power of travel to transform our daily lives—from the iconoclastic travel writer, scholar, and author of Vagabonding For readers who dream of travel, yearn to get back out on the road, or want to enrich a journey they’re currently on, The Vagabond’s Way explores and celebrates the life-altering essence of travel all year long. Each day of the year features a meditation on an aspect of the journey, anchored by words of wisdom from a variety of thinkers—from Stoic philosopher Seneca and poet Maya Angelou to Trappist monk Thomas Merton and Grover from Sesame Street. Iconoclastic travel writer and scholar Rolf Potts embraces the ragged-edged, harder-to-quantify aspects of travel that inevitably change travelers’ lives for the better in unexpected ways. The book’s various sections mirror the phases of a trip, including • dreaming and planning the journey: “All life-affecting journeys—and the unexpected wonders they promise—become real the moment you decide they will happen.” • embracing the rhythms of the journey: “The most poignant experiences on the road occur in those quiet moments when we recognize beauty in the ordinary.” • finding richer travel experiences: “Developing an instinct to venture beyond the obvious on the road allows you to see places as mysteries to be investigated.” • expanding your comfort zone: “No moment of instant gratification can compare to savoring an experience that has been earned by enduring the adversity that comes with it.” The Vagabond’s Way encourages you to sustain the mindset of a journey, even when you aren’t able to travel, and affirms that travel is as much a way of being as it is an act of movement.

INTRODUCED BY PAUL KINGSNORTH, Booker-shortlisted author of The Wake 'I thought that there were two rules in life - never count the cost, and never do anything unless you can do it wholeheartedly. Now is the time to live.' Artist and wanderer Everett Ruess left home at the age of sixteen to immerse himself in the harsh desert landscapes of the American Southwest. With only his donkeys for company, driven by an insatiable longing for beauty and experience, he ventured ever further from civilisation and into the wilderness of Navajo country. In 1934, at the age of twenty, he vanished without trace in Utah, a disappearance that remains unsolved to this day. Through letters, diary excerpts and poems - charting not only his rugged adventures and his exquisite nature writing but his progression as a writer, and into adulthood - and with commentary by W. L. Rusho, A Vagabond for Beauty tells his remarkable story.