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Marion Dapsance''s new biography of Alexandra David-Néel delves into her subject''s prolific writings to discover the true origins of her philosophy, casting new light on the myth that has grown up around the French exploratrice extraordinaire for almost a century. Though little known outside Western Europe, Alexandra David-Néel (1868-1969) is celebrated in her native France as a major spiritual figure of the 20th century. She is remembered as a fearless adventurer, the first Westerner to enter Tibet''s forbidden city of Lhasa, the bringer of Buddhism to the West, an erudite chronicler and author of over 40 books. But far from adopting Buddhism, she is revealed in this work as a staunch materialist, hostile to all forms of religion. We follow her journey from Catholic convert to Protestantism, to her obsession with late 19th-century esotericism and finally to nihilism and anarchism, before she invents her own belief system after decades in the Far East, which she calls Buddhist Modernism. This book shows how her free-thinking independence is the true source of the myth of the intrepid journalist-orientalist, the "lamp of wisdom," the "woman with soles of wind."

This book is the story of how a penniless Tibetan refugee with fierce ambition managed to establish himself in the West as a renowned Buddhist lama and hoodwink thousands of people, including show business luminaries, tycoons and politicians, for more than 30 years.Sogyal Lakar left his birthplace in eastern Tibet aged eight when his family fled the Chinese invasion to seek refuge in India. Arriving in England in the early 1970s, he brought with him traditional ideas and attitudes rooted in a culture whose spiritual sophisticated was coupled with near-feudal social norms.His transition was spectacularly successful. Sogyal Rinpoche, as he became known, was a charismatic multi-millionaire, credited as the author of a best-selling book. He starred in a Hollywood movie and his Rigpa Fellowship attracted followers across the globe. At the peak of his fame he was the most powerful and best-known Tibetan holy man after the Dalai Lama.But, as revealed here, it turns out that Sogyal was a charlatan who was never trained as a lama. He stands accused of financial and sexual misconduct, physical violence and fabricated credentials. Now seriously ill, he is a fugitive rumoured to be in Thailand beyond the reach of police and civil investigations.This book does not sensationalise the perverse behaviour that caused profound suffering to scores of devotees. Based on interviews with victims and eyewitnesses, together with detailed research and first-hand experience, it echoes the feminist perspective highlighted by the Me Too and Times Up movements. It is also a story about the culture clash that occurs when the misogyny of old Tibet is greeted with naïve acceptance and adulation by spiritual seekers in the West.

The making of Night Moves is the story of the collaboration of two artists of starkly different sensibilities – Alan Sharp the hopeless fatalist, Arthur Penn the agitating progressive. Each was just beginning to descend from his peak of cultural relevance. Sharp and Penn came together in 1973 to make a dark film about an America bereft of answers. Everything seemed in place for a triumph. Finally, in careers plagued by compromise, there was both an adequate budget and artistic freedom. Gene Hackman’s performance would expertly particularise an archetype fracturing before our eyes – the knightly private detective unable to solve his case, the macho American male desperate for certainty but lost at sea.But neither Penn nor Sharp was satisfied with the resulting movie and disagreed over its final form. After a long delay, Warner Brothers cut its losses and dumped Night Moves into cinemas with a half-hearted publicity campaign. The movie’s reviews were mixed and it failed to make a profit in the summer of 1975. That season was dominated by Steven Spielberg’s Jaws, which provided Hollywood with a new and super-profitable model of film production.And yet Night Moves has gone on to be recognised as one of the defining films of the 1970s, both as a profound human drama and as an enduring evocation of the zeitgeist. This Technicolor neo-noir, along with Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye (1973) and Roman Polanski’s Chinatown (1974), reinvented and redeemed the private detective movie. A reactionary, nostalgia-crazed culture industry had tried to neuter the genre, reduce it to a repertoire of clichéd gestures. This trio of pictures re-asserted film noir as an ideal cinematic language to explore the darkness at the heart of America.

It’s the mid-1950s, and the post-war American dream has come into full focus in Southern California. Suburbia, freeways, fast food, television and nuclear paranoia. James Stone, a career cop in LA, is along for the ride – until he becomes enmeshed in an LAPD scandal that costs him his job, his wife, and his home.He finds himself exiled to Bakersfield, California, the only place he can still find work as a cop. It’s a mean little town. Hot, flat and dry. Dominated by agribusiness and oil and little else. But it ‘s also brewing the flip side of the American dream, with wild honky-tonks playing the first electric music, motorcycle gangs, the Ku Klux Klan, and test pilots from nearby Edwards air base slumming on the weekends. Stone works homicide and his first case is a murdered young girl found floating face down in the Kern River. It puts him in touch with Christine Harmon, who contracts as the county’s forensic pathologist and runs a small clinic on the side. At the time, woman doctors are almost non-existent, and Stone finds Harmon’s spirited independence fascinating. His investigation takes him deep into the local bar scene, where young players like Buck Owens and Merle Haggard are just getting their start. But then a second homicide pops up, a very sticky one for this ultra-conservative, bible-thumping community. A wealthy businessman is found murdered in his home, apparently the victim of a vicious young drifter living at a seedy motel bar on the edge of town.With the aid of Dr. Harmon, Stone follows a trail of depravity and corruption that reaches into the highest levels of the local business and legal community. And once again he finds himself caught up in a scandal that threatens to ruin him – and this time maybe even kill him. 

I had forgotten that I, too, grew up existentially, until I read Ron Manheimer's absorbing new book about life, aging, identity, and consciousness. Moving effortlessly between personal memoir and philosophical meditation, Manheimer takes us back and forth in time to raise timeless questions. The journey is intellectually exciting, for sure, as we encounter deep insights into the human condition - but it is also surprisingly and profoundly emotional. With a light touch, Manheimer stirs the soul.-- Dan P. McAdams, Henry Wade Rogers Professor of Psychology at Northwestern University.Philosophers, novelists and playwrights of the existentialist tradition continue to be reprinted, discussed and performed across the world, a testimony to their enduring relevance. Embracing the vitality of these engaging and provocative thinkers and writers, History of Consciousness philosopher Ronald Manheimer takes both newcomers and devotees on a personal search for meaning while addressing twelve key ideas that capture the essence of the existential outlook.Exploring situations from everyday life, the author reflects on the most abstract existential terms, such as nothingness, temporality and absurdism. And since existentialism's leading lights - Kierkegaard, Sartre, de Beauvoir, and Camus - lived out their ideas in both private and public spheres, Manheimer delves into their biographies to provide a window into scenes of love and loss, war and political upheaval, friendship and betrayal.Manheimer offers readers a personal view of how historical consciousness was transformed in Europe just as its reverberations reached American shores in the mid-twentieth century. While other philosophical movements such as structuralism, deconstructionism and post-modernism eclipsed the popularity of existentialism, the author shows how its thought currents have inspired the liberation movements of the 20th and 21st centuries - feminism, anti-colonialism, Black Power, and even the age revolution.

The author gives an unsentimental yet heartbreaking account of her brother's life, from his strict upbringing by a fundamentalist father, through ordination as an Anglican priest, then gay liberation, to his diagnosis with AIDS. While slowly succumbing, he still holds services in his church, while parishioners care for him through his final months

As a teenager Debbie Greenberg was spending far too much time at the Cavern Club in her hometown of Liverpool, England. It was already the most famous music club in the world, where she had been dazzled by the Beatles’ debut performance and had witnessed their rise to stardom for two years before watching the local heroes leave home.Then in 1966, after the previous owner declared bankruptcy, her father asked her out of the blue if she thought it would be a good idea to take over the club. It was an offer she couldn’t refuse. She’d been a Cavern fanatic since it was a jazz club, hardly missing a lunchtime or evening rock session until its closure a few weeks before – amid mass protests by Liverpool youth.Now she was suddenly part of a new family business, faced with the task of helping to breathe new life into a dilapidated rock ’n’ roll shrine and build on the legacy of the legendary Mersey Beat.This first-hand account of her ten years frequenting and eventually helping to run the original Cavern Club is the authentic inside story of the Beatles launch pad, full of triumphs and failures – and surprise celebrity encounters.Richly illustrated with dozens of photos, posters and press clips.