Arm Chair Travel

"In Journey of the Universe Brian Thomas Swimme and Mary Evelyn Tucker tell the epic story of the universe from an inspired new perspective, weaving the findings of modern science together with enduring wisdom found in the humanistic traditions of the West, China, India, and indigenous peoples. The authors explore cosmic evolution as a profoundly wondrous process based on creativity, connection, and interdependence, and they envision an unprecedented opportunity for the world's people to address the daunting ecological and social challenges of our times."

Contemporary pilgrim Peter Stanford visits some of the most ancient religious sites in Britain, taking the spiritual temperature of our apparently secular and sceptical age.

Sojourner in Islamic Lands takes us on a journey from Kazakhstan in the far north of Central Asia, across the mountains to the former Soviet Union, then south to Iran just below the Caspian Sea. Russell Fraser follows the ancient Silk Road wherever possible. For centuries the Silk Road was the primary commercial link between Europe and Asia, with much of it over desert sands and accessible only by camel. Building on history and personal experience, Fraser�s narrative describes this vast territory with an eye to geography, artistic culture, and religion over more than two thousand years. The book that he gives us depends first of all on travel, but the author�s eye is on an interior landscape, and he focuses on the influence of religious ideology on the cultural landscape of Central Asia. Delving deeply into art and architecture, he takes them to be Islam�s most significant creative expressions. Although Islam is currently the predominant religion in the region, the book also examines the two other belief systems with modern-day followers�Christianity and an antireligious sect Fraser calls secular progressivism. His aim is to present Islam to Western readers by describing its achievements during the High Middle Ages and comparing and contrasting them with those of modern Islam. The book offers insights into the history of a major world religion through the eyes of a well-known literary scholar on a journey through exotic parts of the world. He steeps us in the latter, inviting the reader to share the journey with him and participate in the sensations it gives rise to.

Jerusalem is the site of some of the most famous religious monuments in the world, from the Dome of the Rock to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre to the Western Wall of the Temple. Since the nineteenth century, the city has been a premier tourist destination, not least because of the countless religious pilgrims from the three Abrahamic faiths. But Jerusalem is more than a tourist site-it is a city where every square mile is layered with historical significance, religious intensity, and extraordinary stories. It is a city rebuilt by each ruling Empire in its own way: the Jews, the Romans, the Christians, the Muslims, and for the past sixty years, the modern Israelis. What makes Jerusalem so unique is the heady mix, in one place, of centuries of passion and scandal, kingdom-threatening wars and petty squabbles, architectural magnificence and bizarre relics, spiritual longing and political cruelty. It is a history marked by three great forces: religion, war, and monumentality. In this book, Simon Goldhill takes on this peculiar archaeology of human imagination, hope, and disaster to provide a tour through the history of this most image-filled and ideology-laden city-from the bedrock of the Old City to the towering roofs of the Holy Sepulchre. Along the way, we discover through layers of buried and exposed memories-the long history, the forgotten stories, and the lesser-known aspects of contemporary politics that continue to make Jerusalem one of the most embattled cities in the world.

Philosophical reflections on journeys and crossings, homes and habitats, have appeared in all major East Asian and Western philosophies. Landscape and travelling first emerged as a key issue in ancient Chinese philosophy, quickly becoming a core concern of Daoism and Confucianism. Yet despite the eminence of such reflections, Landscape and Travelling East and West: A Philosophical Journey is the first academic study to explore these philosophical themes in detail.Individual case studies from esteemed experts consider how philosophical thought about places and journeys have inspired and shaped major intellectual and cultural traditions; how such notions concretely manifested themselves in Chinese art, particularly in the genres of landscape painting and garden architecture. The studies present a philosophical dialogue between Confucianism and Daoism on issues of social space and belonging and include discussion on travel and landscape in Buddhism as well as Japanese and Tibetan contexts. Approaching the topic from an inter-cultural perspectives, particularly East Asian philosophies, and using these to enrich contemporary reflections on space, the environment, and traversing, this unique collection adds an important voice to present philosophical, political, and cultural discourses.

Travel writing, the literary exploration of other cultures, has long been a tradition in the English-speaking world. This book turns the tradition on its head and records what is surely the first Maya literary exploration of the United States. The authors were Tzotzil-speaking Zinacantec Maya who accompanied Robert Laughlin, the compiler of The Great Tzotzil Dictionary of San Lorenzo Zinacantán, on two trips to the United States. These were action-packed journeys. On the initial voyage, in 1963, they were in the United States for the assassination of President Kennedy. "The murderer had never met the President. He never had spoken a single word to him. He didn't even know him!" one of the Zinacantecos reports. They also met Margaret Mead at an American Anthropological Association meeting and flew on their first plane, which they referred to as a "buzzard machine." On the second trip, in 1967, they visited the Navajo and Zuni reservations, stormed the Pentagon with a protest march, and met the Mexican actor Cantinflas, who had just had a face-lift.

It took Laughlin several years to persuade his companions to write about their travels. Laughlin notes that Romin Teratol confided to him before returning to Zinacantán, "If I tell people what I saw, nobody will believe me." Published here with Laughlin's more academic account of his introduction to life among the Zinacantec Maya, these remarkable travelogues shed light on both Maya and American societies.