Summary of Thomas Shor's A Step Away from Paradise


Book Description

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 My friend Tinley was a master painter of thangkas, the Tibetan religious scroll paintings depicting the tantric deities and various Buddhas in their myriad forms. He was crushing a blue semi-precious stone acquired from Tibet to match a patch of sky he was fixing on an antique thangka belonging to Sikkim’s royal family. #2 The author met with Tinley, who was forty when I met him, and lived with his wife and son on the top floor of a building called the Light of Sikkim in Gangtok. He painted, had painting apprentices, and ran a small cyber café. #3 Dorje Wangmo was 36 when she met the lama who had all the signs. His name was Tulshuk Lingpa. She and her husband gave away their house and fields, sold enough to cover the cost of the journey, and gave away the rest. They didn’t need the money. #4 When they got to Tashiding, the lama had already left with his hundreds of followers to open the way. They set off immediately, north to Mount Kanchenjunga. They stopped at Yoksum, the last village on the way, and bought enough food for the long journey.




A Step Away from Paradise


Book Description

WHAT WOULD HAVE HAPPENED... If Lewis Carroll had proclaimed the reality of Alice's Wonderland? What if he had gathered a following & launched an expedition? THE TRUE STORY OF A JOURNEY TO A FANTASTIC LAND IT WAS THE EARLY 1960s. The place, a far-off corner of the Himalayas long fabled in Tibetan tradition to be hiding a valley of immortality among its peaks and glaciers--a real-life Shangri-La. They waited generations for the prophesied lama to come, the one with the secret knowledge of how to 'open' the Hidden Land. Then, one day, he came. His name was Tulshuk Lingpa. THIS BOOK TELLS THE TRUE STORY of this charismatic visionary lama and his remarkable expedition. Against the wishes of the kings of both Sikkim and Nepal, he and over three hundred followers ventured up the snowy slopes of the third highest mountain of the planet. Their aim: to open a crack in the very fabric of reality and go to a land we would all wish to inhabit if it were only there--a land of peace and concord. FORTY YEARS LATER, the author spends over five years tracking down the surviving members of this extraordinary expedition. He deftly weaves their stories together with humor, wisdom, and scholarly research into Tibetan traditions of Hidden Lands, all the while reflecting on what this means for the rest of us. "LIKE NO OTHER BOOK I have ever read...a riveting tale of adventure...honest to the real spirit of Tibet...both unique and intriguing...an engrossing read. Highly recommended." JETSUNMA TENZIN PALMO, from the Foreword From Tulshuk Lingpa's Guidebook to the Hidden Land: "DON'T LISTEN TO ANYBODY. Decide by yourself and practise madness. Develop courage for the benefit of all sentient beings. Then you will automatically be free from the knot of attachment. Then you will continually have the confidence of fearlessness and you can then try to open the Great Door of the Hidden Place." FIRST PUBLISHED BY PENGUIN 2011 CITY LION PRESS EDITION 2017 THIS EDITION IS NOT FOR SALE IN SOUTH ASIA, MALAYSIA, OR SINGAPORE




Looking Backward: 2000-1887


Book Description

Looking Backward: 2000-1887 is a utopian science fiction novel by Edward Bellamy, a lawyer and writer from Chicopee Falls, Massachusetts; it was first published in 1887. According to Erich Fromm, Looking Backward is "one of the most remarkable books ever published in America".




Deep Cut


Book Description

HISTORY / Modern / 20th Century; SCIENCE / History; TECHNOLOGY & ENGINEERING / History.




The Snow Leopard


Book Description

Part of the Penguin Orange Collection, a limited-run series of twelve influential and beloved American classics in a bold series design offering a modern take on the iconic Penguin paperback Winner of the 2016 AIGA + Design Observer 50 Books | 50 Covers competition For the seventieth anniversary of Penguin Classics, the Penguin Orange Collection celebrates the heritage of Penguin’s iconic book design with twelve influential American literary classics representing the breadth and diversity of the Penguin Classics library. These collectible editions are dressed in the iconic orange and white tri-band cover design, first created in 1935, while french flaps, high-quality paper, and striking cover illustrations provide the cutting-edge design treatment that is the signature of Penguin Classics Deluxe Editions today. The Snow Leopard In 1973, Peter Matthiessen and field biologist George Schaller traveled high into the remote mountains of Nepal to study the Himalayan blue sheep and possibly glimpse the rare and beautiful snow leopard. Matthiessen, a student of Zen Buddhism, was also on a spiritual quest to find the Lama of Shey at the ancient shrine on Crystal Mountain. The result is a remarkable account of a journey both physical and spiritual, as the arduous climb yields to Matthiessen a deepening Buddhist understanding of reality, suffering, impermanence, and beauty.




The Deviant's War


Book Description

FINALIST FOR THE 2021 PULITZER PRIZE IN HISTORY. INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER. New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice. Winner of the 2021 Randy Shilts Award for Gay Nonfiction. One of The Washington Post's Top 50 Nonfiction Books of 2020. From a young Harvard- and Cambridge-trained historian, and the Creator and Executive Producer of The Book of Queer (coming June 2022 to Discovery+), the secret history of the fight for gay rights that began a generation before Stonewall. In 1957, Frank Kameny, a rising astronomer working for the U.S. Defense Department in Hawaii, received a summons to report immediately to Washington, D.C. The Pentagon had reason to believe he was a homosexual, and after a series of humiliating interviews, Kameny, like countless gay men and women before him, was promptly dismissed from his government job. Unlike many others, though, Kameny fought back. Based on firsthand accounts, recently declassified FBI records, and forty thousand personal documents, Eric Cervini's The Deviant's War unfolds over the course of the 1960s, as the Mattachine Society of Washington, the group Kameny founded, became the first organization to protest the systematic persecution of gay federal employees. It traces the forgotten ties that bound gay rights to the Black Freedom Movement, the New Left, lesbian activism, and trans resistance. Above all, it is a story of America (and Washington) at a cultural and sexual crossroads; of shocking, byzantine public battles with Congress; of FBI informants; murder; betrayal; sex; love; and ultimately victory.




Hidden Lands in Himalayan Myth and History


Book Description

Hidden Lands in Himalayan Myth and History showcases recent scholarship, photo essays, maps, and translations about hidden lands (sbas yul) across the Himalaya, from historical and contemporary perspectives.




Ulysses


Book Description




Hairspray


Book Description

'Hairspray', the hit musical, is based on John Waters' affectionately subversive homage to his Baltimore youth and the biggest hit musical on Broadway. This is a complete book of lyrics from the Broadway musical.




Among Tibetan Texts


Book Description

For three decades, E. Gene Smith ran the Library of Congress's Tibetan Text Publication Project of the United States Public Law 480 (PL480) - an effort to salvage and reprint the Tibetan literature that had been collected by the exile community or by members of the Bhotia communities of Sikkim, Bhutan, India, and Nepal. Smith wrote prefaces to these reprinted books to help clarify and contextualize the particular Tibetan texts: the prefaces served as rough orientations to a poorly understood body of foreign literature. Originally produced in print quantities of twenty, these prefaces quickly became legendary, and soon photocopied collections were handed from scholar to scholar, achieving an almost cult status. These essays are collected here for the first time. The impact of Smith's research on the academic study of Tibetan literature has been tremendous, both for his remarkable ability to synthesize diverse materials into coherent accounts of Tibetan literature, history, and religious thought, and for the exemplary critical scholarship he brought to this field.