January eBook of the Month: Venerable Father by Paul Breiter

We are showcasing all things Paul Breiter this month with the release of his reprinted book, One Monk, Many Masters. Join in by reading our January eBook of the Month, Venerable Father: A Life with Ajahn Chah!

Available until now only in limited editions, Venerable Father has become an underground classic among Buddhists, especially those practicing the Thai tradition. It details the joys and struggles of Paul Breiter's years with Ajahn Chah, who was perhaps Thailand's best-known and most-loved Buddhist master.

Breiter describes Ajahn Chah as a figure who is at once human yet extraordinary, an orthodox yet unconventional teacher whose remarkable skill, patience, and compassion in training disciples flowed naturally from his deep and joyous realization of the truth. Breiter also explains, quite vividly, the life of a Westerner in a Thai forest monastery and the unique spiritual lessons to be learned there.


About the Author
Paul Breiter was born in Brooklyn in 1948. In 1970, he became ordained as a Buddhist monk in Thailand, where he met Ajahn Chah and became his student. After disrobing in 1977, Breiter returned to the US and continued Buddhist study with masters in the states. Breiter's other books include One Monk, Many Masters, A Still Forest Pool, Being Dharma, and Everything Arises, Everything Falls Away.

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January Book of the Month: One Monk, Many Masters

We are very excited to present the newest addition to our Cosimo Books imprint One Monk, Many Masters: The Wanderings of a Simple Buddhist Traveler by Paul Breiter as our January Book of the Month!

In 1969, Paul Breiter was among the throngs of disaffected youth who traveled to the exotic East, seeking to escape the cultural and spiritual upheavals at home. He traveled first to India, thinking that indulging the senses would be his means of finding God. Instead, he found himself at a monastery in Thailand, taking the precepts of a Buddhist monk. He would spend the next seven years in robes, not indulging the senses, but depriving them.

One Monk, Many Masters is an account of Breiter's life as a monk and his ongoing search for enlightenment after leaving the monastic robes. Breiter's spiritual wanderings weave through the Theravada, Zen, and Tibetan Buddhist traditions under such great teachers as Ajahn Chah, Ajahn Sumedho, Kobun Chino, Lama Gonpo, and the 16th Karmapa. After being out of print for a  number of years, Cosimo Books is proud to make Paul Breiter's biography available again.

About the Author
Paul Breiter was born in Brooklyn in 1948. In 1970, he became ordained as a Buddhist monk in Thailand, where he met Ajahn Chah and became his student. After disrobing in 1977, Breiter returned to the US and continued Buddhist study with masters in the states. Breiter's other books include Venerable Father: A Life with Ajahn Chah (from Paraview Special Editions), A Still Forest Pool, Being Dharma, and Everything Arises, Everything Falls Away.

March Series of the Month: The Queens of Society

 

"Lord Dorchester, however, did not leave his daughter alone, and when a more complaisant suitor with a handsomer income offered himself, briefly commanded her to marry him. To disobey such an order was then the height of undutiful conduct; yet so great was the disgust which Lady Mary entertained for the gentleman proposed that she ventured to write to her father, offering not to marry at all rather than to unite with him. The furious parent sent for his daughter, and told her that she must marry him at once, or consent to pass the rest of her days, while he lived, in retirement in a remote part of the country."
                  -- From Lady Mary Wortley Montagu

First published in 1861, The Queens of Society by Katherine Byerley Thomson is a replica of the beautifully illustrated 1890 second edition. It will delight readers of aristocratic lives and fans of modern fabulosity. This charming two-volume collection is a collection of biographies of some of the most marvelous women of their day. This series will delight readers of aristocratic lives and fans of modern fabulosity and is perfect for those interested in history, women's rights, and of course, for those celebrating International Women’s Day this month.

A queen of society is a woman who, by force of her reputation, good management, abilities, manners, and even her rank and fortune commands a circle of persons of eminence, of fashion, and of celebrity. So say "Grace and Philip Wharton" -- a dual pseudonym for one writer, British author Katherine Byerley Thomson.

In Volume I we meet:
- Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough
- Madame Roland
- Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
- Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire
- Letitia Elizabeth Landon
- Madame de Sévigné
- Sydney Lady Morgan
- Jane, Duchess of Gordon

In Volume II we meet:
- Lady Hervey
- Mrs. Thrale-Piozzi
- Lady Caroline Lamb
- Anne Seymour Damer
- La Marquise du Deffand
- Mrs. Elizabeth Montagu
- Mary, Countess of Pembroke
- La Marquise de Maintenon
- and many, many more!

About the Author
Katherine Byerley Thomson (1797-1862) also wrote the three-volume Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745.

The paperback retail list price for this two-volume set is: $25.98,  our price now is: $19.99 (you save $5.99 or a 23 percent discount) and free shipping.

How Nikola Tesla Inspired Google Founder Larry Page

The favorite biography among Tesla fans, Prodigal Genius: The Life of Nikola Tesla by John J. O'Neill has been getting some recent media attention in The Business Insider.  The article documents the untold story of Larry Page (the co-founder of Google), how he came to found Google, his struggles, his successes, and his relationships with his coworkers. The writer of the article, Nicholas Carlson, compares the two individuals and depicts how Page learned from Tesla's story* and read O'Neill's biography as a young boy. 

Some highlights from the article include:

"In that moment, Page realised it wasn’t enough to envision an innovative technological future. Big ideas aren’t enough. They need to be commercialized. If Page wanted to be an inventor, he was going to have to start a successful company, too."

"Tesla’s story also taught Page to watch out for the Thomas Edisons of the world — people who will use you and place your dreams in the service of their own cynical ends."

To read the full Business Insider article, please do so here. We add a note to this article, which states that Tesla was a Croatian immigrant to the U.S. However, although he was born in Smiljan, currently in Croatia then in the mid 1880s part of the Austrian Hungarian empire, his parents were Serbian and he is considered by most to be Serbian.

Among a hardcover, paperback and eBook version of Prodigal Genius, Cosimo also offers the following titles by Nikola Tesla:

- My Inventions: The Autobiography of Nikola Tesla in paperback, hardcover, and eBook versions

- Experiments With Alternate Currents of High Potential and High Frequency in both paperback and hardcover

- The Problem of Increasing Human Energy: With Special Reference to the Harnessing of the Suns Energy in paperback

Twelve Years a Slave Now Available

"Having been born a freeman, and for more than thirty years enjoyed the blessings of liberty in a free State--and having at the end of that time been kidnapped and sold into Slavery, where I remained, until happily rescued in the month of January, 1853, after a bondage of twelve years--it has been suggested that an account of my life and fortunes would not be uninteresting to the public."

We're pleased to announce that we now offer Solomon Northup's powerful, heartbreaking biographical tale Twelve Years a Slave in both paperback and hardcover, reproduced from its original edition.

This work, originally published in 1853, details Northup's experiences as a free Black man sold into slavery. This harrowing narrative provided factual validation for Harriet Beecher Stowe's fictional Uncle Tom's Cabin. Stowe's work was often maligned and ridiculed by plantation owners who refused to acknowledge the true treatment of slaves in the United States, but Northrup's detailed account of his treatment solidified the facts of the situation, particularly because his enslavement was geographically near the setting of Stowe's work.

Twelve Years a Slave was a bestseller in its time and remains one today. Northrup's work sold approximately 30,000 copies copies when it was first released, and has made the Top Ten of the New York Times Non-Fiction Bestseller list for 2013. Renewed interest in this work stems, in part, to a recent film adaptation by Steve McQueen, starring Chiwetel Ejiofor, Michael Fassbender, and Brad Pitt. It is considered a contender for major honors during the upcoming awards season and has sparked continued debate about the history of this nation and how we represent its events onscreen.

Twelve Years a Slave is available in hardcover and paperback at Amazon and Barnes & Noble online. This must-read is available in a beautiful replica hardcover edition for just $19.79 at Amazon.

"The Men Who Built America"

There is a series on the History Channel called "The Men Who Built America" about famous men who changed the American landscape as we know it: John D. Rockefeller, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Andrew Carnegie, Henry Ford, and J.P. Morgan. The show's summary explains, "These men created the American Dream and were the engine of capitalism as they transformed everything they touched in building the oil, rail, steel, shipping, automobile and finance industries..."

Cosimo carries several biographies and histories about all these great men, and others like them. If you're a fan of the History Channel and want to know more about these historical figures, check out our bookstore. You can read books by and about Andrew Carnegie, Henry Ford,  John D. Rockefeller, Cornelius Vanderbilt, and soon, J. P. Morgan. Read and learn about the history of America and the faces who made it.