Books for your background reading:
The New Earth: Awakening Your Life's Purpose
Eckart Tolle, 2005
According to Tolle, humans are on the verge of creating a new
world by a personal transformation that shifts our attention away from
our ever-expanding egos. Originally released in 2005, both book and audiobook were
reissued when Oprah Winfrey chose the title for her book club this year.
Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain
John J. Ratey, M.D., 2008
In SPARK, John J. Ratey, M.D., embarks upon a fascinating and
entertaining journey through the mind-body connection, presenting
startling research to prove that exercise is truly our best defense
against everything from depression to ADD to addiction to aggression to
menopause to Alzheimer's. Filled with amazing case studies (such as the
revolutionary fitness program in Naperville, Illinois, which has put
this school district of 19,000 kids first in the world of science test
scores), SPARK is the first book to explore comprehensively the
connection between exercise and the brain. It will change forever the
way you think about your morning run---or, for that matter, simply the
way you think.
The Lone Samurai, The Life of Miyamoto Musashi
William Scott Wilson, 2004
From Publishers Weekly:
Musashi is primarily known in the West as the author of The Book of Five Rings,
a guide to swordsmanship strategies that became a essential
business-strategy manual in the 1980s. Wilson, having translated
Musashi's book into English, turns for the first time to biography,
with as complete a life of the man behind the sword as possible, given
his legendary stature and peripatetic, largely undocumented story.
Musashi lived in the 17th century and had his first match at 13 with a shugyosha
(an older, professional swordsman); only Musashi walked away alive. For
three decades, he wandered feudal Japan, moving from patron to patron,
taking on opponents in formal and informal matches, teaching others his
art and sometimes taking part in clan and regional rivalries. He
eventually settled in southern Japan, where his martial art skills led
organically to visual art: simple-looking, highly disciplined
ink-and-brush painting and calligraphy. Toward the end of his life,
Musashi synthesized everything he'd learned into the literary work he
is now best known for. Wilson integrates a considerable amount of
Japanese history and culture into a short, dense book with lots of
specialized information. Although Musashi doesn't become fully
dimensional—and given the scarcity of primary source material, he
probably can't—Wilson provides an extensive appendix of other materials
that have depicted the legendary swordsman over the centuries.
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