Notes from the Edge Times


Book Description

In this unsparing tour of the perils and promises of the current era, visionary author Daniel Pinchbeck helps us understand that we don't need to wait for the dawning of the next age to radically change our perspectives. In the years since his pioneering work 2012, Daniel Pinchbeck has touched a legion of readers hungry for insight and guidance about new ways of living amid the crises of the current moment. Notes from the Edge Times collects Pinchbeck's most penetrating recent columns, articles, and essays that amount to an extraordinary mosaic view of the hopes, nightmares, and signs of breakthrough that mark our present era. Pinchbeck examines the current economic collapse (an event he had foreseen by many months), radical political and ecological alternatives, the uses of psychedelics for spiritual insight, the revival of the sexual revolution, unexplained phenomena such as crop circles and the Norway spiral, the imminent (and often-misunderstood) question of 2012, and what it means to be an artist in a time of radical change. Pinchbeck's virtuosity as a social critic, on full display in these pieces, is his ability to illuminate real and serious questions within unconventional topics that most literary intellects are unwilling to touch, from secret weapons systems to extrasensory abilities to the intelligence of plant life. In Notes from the Edge Times, Pinchbeck does more than critique present-day questions and conflicts; he provides fresh ideas for living more consciously now, and for constructing our own more enlightened futures, even as the world around us faces profound environmental, social, and spiritual challenges




Notes from the Edge of the Narrative Matrix


Book Description

We each inhabit two very different worlds simultaneously: the real world, and the narrative world.The real physical world of matter, of atoms and molecules and stars and planets and animals wandering around trying to bite and copulate with each other often has very little to do with the narrative world, which is made of stories and mental chatter. Powerful people have long understood that if you control the stories people tell about themselves, then you can control their resources and their reality. From priests to politicians, CEOs to the architects of war, all have deeply understood the importance of maintaining control of the narrative. We have reached a crisis point where the disconnect between narrative and reality is threatening all life on earth. The narrative world is getting more and more chimerical while the real world is headed toward disaster due to the military and ecological pressures created by our status quo. There are only a few ways this can possibly break, with the most obvious being mass scale ecological disaster or nuclear war. There is also the possibility that the human species goes the other way and adapts, and wakes up to the way narrative has been used to manipulate us into consenting to our own extinction. Throughout recorded history, all around the globe, wise humans have been attesting that it is possible to transcend our delusion-rooted conditioning and come to a lucid perception of the narrative world and reality. There are many names for this lucid perception, but the one that caught on most widely is enlightenment. We all have this potential within us. It has been gestating in us for many millennia. As we approach our adaptation-or-extinction juncture, we are very close indeed to learning if that potential will awaken in us or not.This book rests on the meniscus of that possibility.




The Mental Edge


Book Description

No matter what sport you enjoy or what level you play, you have the potential for a peak performance--and realizing that potential is the goal of everyone who makes athletics part of their lives. And while you can benefit from the advice of tennis and golf pros, marathon runners, and skiing instructors, the edge you seek to maximize your performance isn't in your stroke, your pace, or your posture--it's in your mind. Kenneth Baum describes the program he uses to sharpen and maximize the sports performances of thousands of professional and amateur athletes across the country: * Power Talk * Proper Visualization and Perception Stretchers * Performance Cues * Identifying and Conquering Obstacles * A Commitment to Consistent and Resilient ActionYour mind is your most valuable piece of equipment, your strongest muscle--and your best shot at peak performance for life




Postcards From the Edge


Book Description

** THE NEW YORK TIMES-BESTSELLING CULT CLASSIC NOVEL ** ** In a new edition introduced by Stephen Fry ** ‘I don’t think you can even call this a drug. This is just a response to the conditions we live in.’ Suzanne Vale, formerly acclaimed actress, is in rehab, feeling like ‘something on the bottom of someone’s shoe, and not even someone interesting’. Immersed in the sometimes harrowing, often hilarious goings-on of the drug hospital and wondering how she’ll cope – and find work – back on the outside, she meets new patient Alex. Ambitious, good-looking in a Heathcliffish way and in the grip of a monumental addiction, he makes Suzanne realize that, however eccentric her life might seem, there’s always someone who’s even closer to the edge of reason. Carrie Fisher’s bestselling debut novel is an uproarious commentary on Hollywood – the home of success, sex and insecurity – and has become a beloved cult classic. ‘This novel, with its energy, bounce and generous delivery of a loud laugh on almost every page, stands as a declaration of war on two fronts: on normal and on unhappy’ STEPHEN FRY ‘A single woman’s answer to Nora Ephron’s Heartburn . . . the smart successor to Joan Didion’s Play It as It Lays’ Los Angeles Times ‘A cult classic . . . A wonderfully funny, brash and biting novel’ Washington Post 'A wickedly shrewd black-humor riff on the horrors of rehab and the hollows of Hollywood life' People 'Searingly funny' Vogue




Settled in the Wild


Book Description

Whether we live in cities, suburbs, or villages, we are encroaching on nature, and it in one way or another perseveres. Naturalist Susan Shetterly looks at how animals, humans, and plants share the land—observing her own neighborhood in rural Maine. She tells tales of the locals (humans, yes, but also snowshoe hares, raccoons, bobcats, turtles, salmon, ravens, hummingbirds, cormorants, sandpipers, and spring peepers). She expertly shows us how they all make their way in an ever-changing habitat. In writing about a displaced garter snake, witnessing the paving of a beloved dirt road, trapping a cricket with her young son, rescuing a fledgling raven, or the town's joy at the return of the alewife migration, Shetterly issues warnings even as she pays tribute to the resilience that abounds. Like the works of Annie Dillard and Aldo Leopold, Settled in the Wild takes a magnifying glass to the wildness that surrounds us. With keen perception and wit, Shetterly offers us an education in nature, one that should inspire us to preserve it.




Edge of Wonder


Book Description

In this remarkably beautiful collection of poems and musings, Victoria Erickson calls us to the core of our own aliveness with an ongoing invitation to inhabit a life fiercely lived. Artfully weaving words like a vivid tapestry, she gently reaches into the soul and invites us to swim in an ocean of hope, continuously choosing love and everyday magic over fear and resistance. Equal parts old soul and starry eyed child, Erickson encourages us to find the depth and meaning within our lives, reminding us to stay true to our own paths, while embracing both the pain and the beauty at the heart of reality. Hold this book close as a timeless reminder that wonder is everywhere. Your daily cup of universe.




Field Notes from the Edge


Book Description

In Field Notes from the Edge, the acclaimed writer of the Guardian's "Country Diary," Paul Evans, takes us on a journey through the in-between spaces of Nature--such as strandlines, mudflats, cliff tops, and caves--where one wilderness is on the verge of becoming another and all things are possible. Here, Evans searches out wildlife and plants to reveal a Nature that is inspiring yet intimidating; miraculous yet mundane; part sacred space, part wasteland. It is here that we tread the edge between a fear of Nature's dangers and a love of Nature's beauty. Combining a naturalist's eye for observation with a poet's ear for the lyrical, Field Notes from the Edge confirms Paul Evans's place among our leading nature writers today.




The High-Velocity Edge: How Market Leaders Leverage Operational Excellence to Beat the Competition


Book Description

Generate faster, better results—using less capital and fewer resources! Toyota, Alcoa, Pratt & Whitney, and the U.S. Navy's Nuclear Power Program operate in vastly different worlds, but they have one thing in common. Each of these organizations generates constant, almost automatic operational self-improvements at rates faster, durations longer, and breadths wider than any of its competitors. Excellence in operational management is the single element separating industry leaders from all others. The High-Velocity Edge is a blueprint for fueling innovation and improvement at both the management and process level in your own company. It’s not magic, it’s not luck. It’s something that that can be taught, cultivated, practiced, and effectively applied to an organization. Spears explains how to: Build a system of “dynamic discovery” that reveals operational problems and weaknesses Attack and solve problems at the time and in the place where they occur, converting weaknesses into strengths Disseminate knowledge gained from solving local problems throughout the company as a whole Create managers invested in the process of continual innovation Apply the lessons of The High-Velocity Edge, and you will enjoy profitability, quality, efficiency, reliability, and agility unmatched by any of your rivals.




A Second Chance at Eden


Book Description

Six short stories and a novella from a master of science fiction, Peter F. Hamilton. This collection includes Sonnie's Edge, as seen in the award-winning Netflix anthology series Love, Death & Robots. Set in the same universe as the Night’s Dawn trilogy, Peter F. Hamilton presents a compelling mix of human dilemmas, imagined technologies and extraordinary new cultures. Among others, this collection includes Sonnie’s Edge, a story of contests to the death between constructed monsters. But one has a special advantage . . . We also visit an abandoned alien spacecraft in Escape Route. Abandoned, but is it really as empty as it seems? In the title novella, A Second Chance at Eden, the co-creator of a genetically-engineered habitat is found murdered. But nobody can identify the perpetrator – or the motive. Featuring a diverse selection of stories set far in the future and beyond the stars, A Second Chance at Eden is a must-have collection from a writer at the top of his game.




The Edge of Being


Book Description

A tender and heartfelt queer YA novel about the multiplicities of grief, deeply held family secrets, and finding new love. Isaac Griffin has always felt something was missing from his life. And for good reason: he's never met his dad. He'd started to believe he'd never belong in this world, that the scattered missing pieces of his life would never come together, when he discovers a box hidden deep in the attic with his father's name on it. When the first clue points him to San Francisco, he sets off with his boyfriend to find the answers, and the person he’s been waiting his whole life for. But when his vintage station wagon breaks down (and possibly his relationship too) they are forced to rely on an unusual girl who goes by Max—and has her own familial pain—to take them the rest of the way. As his family history is revealed, Isaac finds himself drawing closer to Max. Using notes his dad had written decades ago, the two of them retrace his father’s steps during the weeks leading up to the Compton's Cafeteria Riot in San Francisco, a precursor to the Stonewall Riots a few years later. Only to discover, as he learns about the past that perhaps the missing pieces of his life weren't ever missing at all.