A “heroic” biography of John Cage and his “awakening through Zen Buddhism”—“a kind of love story” about a brilliant American pioneer of the creative arts who transformed himself and his culture (The New York Times) Composer John Cage sought the silence of a mind at peace with itself—and found it in Zen Buddhism, a spiritual path that changed both his music and his view of the universe. “Remarkably researched, exquisitely written,” Where the Heart Beats weaves together “a great many threads of cultural history” (Maria Popova, Brain Pickings) to illuminate Cage’s struggle to accept himself and his relationship with choreographer Merce Cunningham. Freed to be his own man, Cage originated exciting experiments that set him at the epicenter of a new avant-garde forming in the 1950s. Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol, Yoko Ono, Allan Kaprow, Morton Feldman, and Leo Castelli were among those influenced by his ‘teaching’ and ‘preaching.’ Where the Heart Beats shows the blossoming of Zen in the very heart of American culture.
A “heroic” and “fascinating” biography of John Cage showing how his work, and that of countless American artists, was transformed by Zen Buddhism (The New York Times) Where the Heart Beats is the story of the tremendous changes sweeping through American culture following the Second World War, a time when the arts in America broke away from centuries of tradition and reinvented themselves. Painters converted their canvases into arenas for action and gesture, dancers embraced pure movement over narrative, performance artists staged “happenings” in which anything could happen, poets wrote words determined by chance. In this tumultuous period, a composer of experimental music began a spiritual quest to know himself better. His earnest inquiry touched thousands of lives and created controversies that are ongoing. He devised unique concerts—consisting of notes chosen by chance, randomly tuned radios, and silence—in the service of his absolute conviction that art and life are one inseparable truth, a seamless web of creation divided only by illusory thoughts. What empowered John Cage to compose his incredible music—and what allowed him to inspire tremendous transformations in the lives of his fellow artists—was Cage’s improbable conversion to Zen Buddhism. This is the story of how Zen saved Cage from himself. Where the Heart Beats is the first book to address the phenomenal importance of Zen Buddhism to John Cage’s life and to the artistic avant-garde of the 1950s and 1960s. Zen’s power to transform Cage’s troubled mind—by showing him his own enlightened nature—liberated Cage from an acute personal crisis that threatened everything he most deeply cared abouthis life, his music, and his relationship with his life partner, Merce Cunningham. Caught in a society that rejected his art, his politics, and his sexual orientation, Cage was transformed by Zen from an overlooked and marginal musician into the absolute epicenter of the avant-garde. Using Cage’s life as a starting point, Where the Heart Beats looks beyond to the individuals Cage influenced and the art he inspired. His creative genius touched Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol, Yoko Ono, Alan Kaprow, Morton Feldman, and Leo Castelli, who all went on to revolutionize their respective disciplines. As Cage’s story progresses, as his collaborators’ trajectories unfurl, Where the Heart Beats shows the blossoming of Zen in the very heart of American culture.
A beautiful photographic board book featuring babies from all over the world and the sounds their hearts make as they beat with love. No matter what language we speak, no matter where we live in the world, our hearts beat with the same rhythm. We may hear and say the sounds differently—doki doki in Japanese, tu tump tu tump in Italian, dugeun dugeun in Korean, dhak dhak in Urdu, boum boum in French and thump thump in English—but when our hearts beat, all the sounds mean the same thing: you are alive and you are loved.
Many people in Great Britain and the United States can recall elderly relatives who remembered long stretches of verse learned at school decades earlier, yet most of us were never required to recite in class. Heart Beats is the first book to examine how poetry recitation came to assume a central place in past curricular programs, and to investigate when and why the once-mandatory exercise declined. Telling the story of a lost pedagogical practice and its wide-ranging effects on two sides of the Atlantic, Catherine Robson explores how recitation altered the ordinary people who committed poems to heart, and changed the worlds in which they lived. Heart Beats begins by investigating recitation's progress within British and American public educational systems over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and weighs the factors that influenced which poems were most frequently assigned. Robson then scrutinizes the recitational fortunes of three short works that were once classroom classics: Felicia Hemans's "Casabianca," Thomas Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard," and Charles Wolfe's "Burial of Sir John Moore after Corunna." To conclude, the book considers W. E. Henley's "Invictus" and Rudyard Kipling's "If--," asking why the idea of the memorized poem arouses such different responses in the United States and Great Britain today. Focusing on vital connections between poems, individuals, and their communities, Heart Beats is an important study of the history and power of memorized poetry.
A poignant and inspirational love story set in Burma, The Art of Hearing Heartbeats spans the decades between the 1950s and the present. When a successful New York lawyer suddenly disappears without a trace, neither his wife nor his daughter Julia has any idea where he might be…until they find a love letter he wrote many years ago, to a Burmese woman they have never heard of. Intent on solving the mystery and coming to terms with her father’s past, Julia decides to travel to the village where the woman lived. There she uncovers a tale of unimaginable hardship, resilience, and passion that will reaffirm the reader’s belief in the power of love to move mountains.
Popular television host Jeff Corwin takes readers on a gripping journey around the world to meet the animals threatened by extinction It's no secret that our planet is in crisis. Environmental threats such as climate change, pollution, habitat loss, and land degradation threaten the survival of thousands of plant and animal species. In 100 Heartbeats, Jeff Corwin provides an urgent portrait of the wildlife teetering on the brink. From the forests slipping away beneath the stealthy paws of the Florida panther, to the giant panda's plight to climb ever higher in the mountains of China, Corwin takes you on a global tour to witness firsthand the critical state of our natural world. Along the way, he shares inspiring stories of battles being waged and won by the conservationists on the front lines of defense. The race to save the planet's most endangered wildlife is under way. Every heartbeat matters.
Wingbeats and Heartbeats is a wingshooter's odyssey to the wild places where, at the end of the day, the companionship of faithful gun dogs and good friends matters more than a bulging game bag. In this sometimes humorous and sometimes poignant collection of essays, Dave Books celebrates a time-honored connection to the land and the hard-earned hunting rewards of an outdoor life. Through these essays, readers tag along on adventures in the forests of Wisconsin and Minnesota, the fields of Iowa and North Dakota, the prairies of eastern Montana and Nebraska, the mountains of western Montana and Idaho, and the deserts of Arizona. Books also writes of the game birds that hunters pursue and admire: grouse, quail, woodcock, doves, chukars, Hungarian partridge, and waterfowl. A heartfelt tribute to the freedom and magic of the hunt, Wingbeats and Heartbeats is a book that has much to say about work and fun, success and failure, and the sights, sounds, and smells of a day afield.
Part of a groundbreaking series of photobooks on LGBTQ communities around the world, a moving portrait of a group of queer East Africans who fled their home countries for the United States Same-sex relations are illegal in thirty-eight African countries, often under colonial-era laws. One of the most dangerous countries has been Uganda, which is attempting to pass an Anti-Homosexuality Bill (commonly known as the "Kill the Gays" bill) that seeks to broaden the criminalization of same-sex relations, making it punishable by life imprisonment and, in some instances, death. This Is How the Heart Beats is a portrait by acclaimed photographer Jake Naughton of a group of East Africans who have fled unimaginable abuse in their homeland for the United States. One couple, Sulait and his boyfriend, had been tortured in prison in the months after the anti-homosexuality bill had been proposed and, on their release, had made their way to Kenya, where they were attacked by a mob of machete-wielding men. It was only after years in hiding that many such refugees have been resettled in the United States. With an introduction by journalist Jacob Kushner and a foreword by Ugandan queer activist Ruth Muganzi, This Is How the Heart Beats is a record of LGBTQ forced migration unlike any other, following this community from its darkest moments to an uncertain future. At a time of great uncertainty for both LGBTQ and refugee rights, this work illuminates the stakes for those at the center of a firestorm.
Scotland, 1940 In a house on the east coast, Jane faces motherhood alone. With her husband away at war, there is no one to protect her from small town suspicions and she must learn to keep her secrets to herself.
This is the English-language edition of what has become one of the most controversial books in German politics today. Oskar Lafontaine was the leader of Germany's Social Democratic party and finance minister in Gerhard Schr?der's government until he suddenly resigned in March 1999. Lafontaine's left-wing commitments brought him into conflict with Schr?der's endorsement of third way politics and with his attempt to remodel the SDP along the lines of Tony Blair's New Labour. The Heart Beats on the Left is the inside story of why Lafontaine broke with the SDP and Schr?der's government, and why he believed that the social and political costs of Schr?der's third way politics were too high. It is a merciless settling of scores in which the policies of Schr?der and his government are subjected to scathing criticism. But it is also the most sustained criticism of third way politics from a prominent political figure who stands on the left. A bestseller in Germany and already translated into many languages, this book is bound to be widely reviewed in English and to become a focal point for political debate about social democracy and its future.
