Other Worldly

Buddhist Nuns, Monks, and Other Worldly Matters: Recent Papers on Monastic Buddhism in India is the fourth in a series of collected essays by one of today’s most distinguished scholars of Indian Buddhism. In these articles Gregory Schopen once again displays the erudition and originality that have contributed to a major shift in the way that Indian Buddhism is perceived, understood, and studied.

Discover words to surprise, delight, and enamor. Learn terms for the sunlight that filters through the leaves of trees, for dancing awkwardly but with relish, and for the look shared by two people who each wish the other would speak first. Other-Wordly is an irresistible ebook for lovers of words and those lost for words alike.

Traditional Chinese medicine is often portrayed as an enduring system of therapeutic knowledge that has become globalized in recent decades. In Other-Worldly, Mei Zhan argues that the discourses and practices called “traditional Chinese medicine” are made through, rather than prior to, translocal encounters and entanglements. Zhan spent a decade following practitioners, teachers, and advocates of Chinese medicine through clinics, hospitals, schools, and grassroots organizations in Shanghai and the San Francisco Bay Area. Drawing on that ethnographic research, she demonstrates that the everyday practice of Chinese medicine is about much more than writing herbal prescriptions and inserting acupuncture needles. “Traditional Chinese medicine” is also made and remade through efforts to create a preventive medicine for the “proletariat world,” reinvent it for cosmopolitan middle-class aspirations, produce clinical “miracles,” translate knowledge and authority, and negotiate marketing strategies and medical ethics. Whether discussing the presentation of Chinese medicine at a health fair sponsored by a Silicon Valley corporation, or how the inclusion of a traditional Chinese medicine clinic authenticates the “California” appeal of an upscale residential neighborhood in Shanghai, Zhan emphasizes that unexpected encounters and interactions are not anomalies in the structure of Chinese medicine. Instead, they are constitutive of its irreducibly complex and open-ended worlds. Zhan proposes an ethnography of “worlding” as an analytic for engaging and illuminating emergent cultural processes such as those she describes. Rather than taking “cultural difference” as the starting point for anthropological inquiries, this analytic reveals how various terms of difference—for example, “traditional,” “Chinese,” and “medicine”—are invented, negotiated, and deployed translocally. Other-Worldly is a theoretically innovative and ethnographically rich account of the worlding of Chinese medicine.

"Otherworldly, avant-garde fashion and style. Fashion from another planet. Unwearable, subversive, radically post-human, alien. Otherworldly presents avant-garde garments, styling, fashion photography, and young designers who are a whole galaxy away from the mainstream.Other rules apply to the fashion of the future. New technologies and materials make things possible today that couldnt have even been imagined in the past. High-tech fabrics and melting forms are no longer science fiction but reality. Inspired by the odd, mutant, and deformed, many designers and stylists are now redefining clothing to expand the body and speculate on the evolution of identity, from wearables to the utter transfiguration of the human silhouette. Other worldly showcases a fashion avant-garde between futurism and fetish. Featuring work by emerging talents and established designers such as Alexander McQueen, Martin Margiela, Lucy McRae, Peter Popps, Iris van Herpen, and others, it not only explores groundbreaking developments but also their fruitful interplay with photography"-- Publisher's description.

From the Other World: Poems in Memory of James Wright brings together elegies written by many of Wright's most important contemporaries, including Robert Bly, Galway Kinnell, W.S. Merwin, and C.K Williams. Interspersed with these are poems by a newer generation of writers inspired by Wright. This unique collection attests to the continuing stature of James Wright on the American literary landscape.

The foundational text for the acclaimed international best seller Reading Lolita in Tehran “Empathetic, incisive. . . . A sweeping overview of Nabokov's major works. . . . Graceful [and] discerning.”—Kirkus Reviews The ruler of a totalitarian state seeks validation from a former schoolmate, now the nation’s foremost thinker, in order to access a cultural cache alien to his regime. A literary critic provides commentary on an unfinished poem that both foretells the poet’s death and announces the critic’s secret identity as the king of a lost country. The greatest of Vladimir Nabokov’s enchanters—Humbert—is lost within the antithesis of a fairy story, in which Lolita does not hold the key to his past but rather imprisons him within the knowledge of his distance from that past. In this precursor to her international best seller Reading Lolita in Tehran, Azar Nafisi deftly explores the worlds apparently lost to Nabokov’s characters, their portals of access to those worlds, and how other worlds hold a mirror to Nabokov’s experiences of physical, linguistic, and recollective exile. Written before Nafisi left the Islamic Republic of Iran, and now published in English for the first time and with a new introduction by the author, this book evokes the reader’s quintessential journey of discovery and reveals what caused Nabokov to distinctively shape and reshape that journey for the author.

Belief in a spirit world, and a blissful or agonizing afterlife, is one of the most pervasive and deeply-rooted characteristics of religion. This volume offers a wide-ranging exploration of this basic religious theme. Most of the case studies are drawn from Jewish and Christian tradition, providing in-depth coverage of Judaism and Christianity from late Antiquity through the Medieval period. There are also examples from Islamic, Japanese, and Chinese traditions for a comparative perspective with Western traditions. Several chapters deal with the formative period of Jewish and Christian apocalypticism, which is concerned not only with the end of the physical world but also with the eternal heavenly world. These chapters are also important for illustrating the development of mysticism in Western traditions. The most distinctive aspect of this book is that it does not deal with antiquity alone, but juxtaposes the historical essays with a survey of modern day, near-death experiences. It raises issues of fundamental importance for the psychology of religion as well as for its history The most distinctive aspect of this book is that it does not deal with antiquity alone, but juxtaposes the historical essays with a survey of modern day, near-death experiences. It raises issues of fundamental importance for the psychology of religion as well as for its history.

TWO WOLVES IN A GALAXY OF LARGER PREDATORS Jon Moore: nanotech-enhanced solider-of-fortune. Battlewagon Lobo: A.I.-equipped intelligence and weapons platform (think: a fortress on wheels) of enormous destructive potential. Two very dangerous wolves in a galaxy of deadly corporate and paramilitary predators. But Moore has grown weary of the killing and just once he'd like to finish a job without leaving a trail of blood behind him. Not going to happen. Not on a pristine planet called Macken, where two gigantic corporations vie for control of the local jump gate and access to the riches of an undeveloped world. Dealing with a kidnapping and extortion scheme is only the beginning for Moore and Lobo. Next they must survive an enormous bounty placed on Moore's head long enough to rescue yet again the young woman they accidentally delivered into the wrong hands. But with the help of an old lover and under-the-table support from the mercenary outfit that made him, Moore just might beat the odds, save the girl, and get out of this one a little richer and one step closer to making it back to the strange world of his origin. One Jump Ahead: the first novel in the Jon & Lobo series At the publisher's request, this title is sold without DRM (Digital Rights Management). "Just when I was thinking science fiction might be over, Mark Van Name proves that there are still smart, exciting, emotional sci-fi stories to be told. " ¾Orson Scott Card "Holy Squidlets, Batman! One Jump Ahead is like well-aged white lightning: it goes down smooth then delivers a kick that knocks you on the floor. I want to kidnap Mark Van Name and steal his brain. I also want an illegal, souped-up racing ray. Mark's going to be the guy to beat in the race to the top of SFdom." ¾John Ringo "Hard real science smoothly blended into action that blazes like a pinball from one exotic setting to another. This one is very, very good." ¾David Drake "One Jump Ahead is the sort of¾dare I say it ¾old-fashioned SF adventure tale that I dote on. Mark Van Name's headlong pace of story-telling reminds me a lot of Keith Laumer, in fact. He's one of the very few modern authors I've seen who can manage that." ¾Eric Flint "One Jump Ahead is alive with fast-paced action, wild ideas, and characters to root for. A joy to read." ¾Jack McDevitt