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COMPASSION IN ACTION

SETTING OUT ON THE PATH OF SERVICE

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The freewheeling author of the pop spiritual classic Be Here Now teams with fellow Hindu devotee Bush to guide inexperienced Americans on to the path of compassionate action—offering his own spiritual autobiography as testimony to the transforming power of love and social action. Ram Dass, nÇ Richard Alpert, treats his famous psychedelic experience with Timothy Leary at Harvard in the early 60's as a spiritual turning point, granting him beautiful if ephemeral visions of unity with the cosmos. The real emotional possibilities behind those visions opened up to him, he says, when he found Neem Karoli Baba, his beloved Hindu spiritual teacher, who instructed him to tell the truth and always love everyone. It apparently took Ram Dass (so named by the guru after a monkey god that is an archetypal servant of man) several decades of spiritual work on himself while exploring different forms of volunteerism to glimpse how it is possible to fuse the quest for a truly liberated awareness with compassionate work for others: ``The only thing about being with people that `brings me down,' that keeps me from resting in spacious awareness, that deflates that state of joyful equanimity, is my own mind....'' Finally, through his experience as a fund-raiser and chairperson for the Seva Foundation, Ram Dass, along with Bush, has come to isolate simple steps—presented here, and including doing what you love and starting small—that others can follow to come to their own path of service. Occasionally repetitive and simplistic but nonetheless a warmhearted and genuinely inspiring introduction to compassion as a way of life.

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Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1992

ISBN: 0-517-57635-X

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Harmony

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1991

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THE ELEMENTS OF STYLE

50TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION

Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...

Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.

Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").

Pub Date: May 15, 1972

ISBN: 0205632645

Page Count: 105

Publisher: Macmillan

Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972

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NUTCRACKER

This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)

Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996

ISBN: 0-15-100227-4

Page Count: 136

Publisher: Harcourt

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996

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