Nick Blishen

Heavy Paperback (2 to 4 lbs)

Virginia

The Steel String Guitar

A step-by-step guide to a unique instrument, made to the reader's own specification and design Many people are frustrated by the mass-produced guitar and dream of something more unique. This practical book will help readers achieve that dream, and will inform and enlighten them along the way. Drawing on a range of ideas and techniques, it explains the process in a clear and logical way, thereby demystifying the task and making the guitar a joy to build and then to play. It covers tools, techniques, and selection of materials; how to avoid pitfalls and make faster progress; and how to achieve a professional finish and set up the guitar. From making the initial templates to gluing the fingerboards, it provides careful instruction on the entire detailed process.

Acoustic Guitar Making

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Richard F. Burton

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

Six enchanting tales told by an Arabian princess to delay her execution: "Sinbad the Seaman and Sinbad the Landsman;" "Aladdin, or the Wonderful Lamp;" "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves," and 3 others.

Favorite Tales from the Arabian Nights' Entertainments

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Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

The Prince and Other Writings

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José María Parramón

Paperback (1 to 2 lbs)

Teaches the techniques of each medium by showing and commenting on the working and finished stages of projects by various artists. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Drawing with Crayons, Pastels, Sanguine and Chalks

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Lee Hammond

Create Lifelike Portraits, Pets, Landscapes and More

Young at art

Combine the familiar charm of crayons with "grown-up" art techniques for surprisingly realistic results!

Your old childhood coloring friends are all grown up! In this unique book, best-selling artist Lee Hammond proves that crayons are not just for kids anymore but can hold their own as a "serious" (if unexpected) art medium. Use Hammond's easy methods to create striking drawings that feature brilliant color and incredibly lifelike texture.

 * 29 step-by-step demonstrations cover a wide range of subjects--still life, landscapes, animals and people
 * Simple blending, layering and burnishing techniques translate into remarkably realistic drawings
 * Hammond's graphing and "puzzle piece" theories help you draw any subject with true-to-life results
 * Features great tricks you can pass along to other crayon lovers in your life, regardless of age

You simply won't believe what you can accomplish with this familiar and affordable medium. Rediscover the creative thrill of opening the "big box," and infuse your art with a fresh sense of play.

Amazing Crayon Drawing with Lee Hammond

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Ray Campbell Smith

An Introduction to Acrylics

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Jelbert

An easy-to-follow, step by step guide to creating wonderful acrylic paintings.

Leisure Arts Creative Acrylic Techniques

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Lewis Vaughn

Philosophy

A Student's Guide to Writing Philosophy Essays

Writing Philosophy: A Student's Guide to Writing Philosophy Essays is a concise, self-guided manual that covers the basics of argumentative essay writing and encourages students to master fundamental skills quickly, with minimal instructor input. Opening with an introductory chapter on how toread philosophy, the book then moves into the basics of writing summaries and analyzing arguments. It provides step-by-step instructions for each phase of the writing process, from formulating a thesis, to creating an outline, to writing a final draft, supplementing this tutorial approach with modelessays, outlines, introductions, and conclusions. Skills essential to evaluating arguments, citing sources, avoiding plagiarism, detecting fallacies, and formatting final drafts are dealt with in detail. The final two chapters serve as a reference guide to common mistakes and basic skills insentence construction, writing style, and word choice.Employing a rulebook format similar to that of the classic Elements of Style (by Strunk, White, and Angell), Lewis Vaughn distills helpful writing advice into simple rules that students can easily remember and apply--and that instructors can refer to when reviewing student papers. These rulescover essay organization, sentence structure, documentation styles, plagiarism, grammar, usage, and more. Written in a clear and engaging style and incorporating samples of student writing, Writing Philosophy is an indispensable resource for virtually any philosophy course.

Writing Philosophy

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F. Peart

People who want to learn to paint flowers without relying on their drawing skills have everything they need in this book. Fiona Pearts expert use of bright, clear watercolour washes to create beautiful flower paintings is fully demonstrated in this inspiring book on tulips. The tracings and clear step-by-step photographs explain the painting process in great depth and make it easy for readers to reproduce all of the projects, which include tulips in a variety of shapes, sizes and colours.

Ready to Paint Tulips in Watercolour

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Roger T. Ames

A Vocabulary

Confucian Role Ethics is an exploration of what constitutes and how one becomes an authentic, moral human being as conceived in the Confucian tradition. The book establishes an interpretive context by exploring some of the cosmological foundations of Confucian philosophy through discussion of commentary on the Yijing (The Book of Changes), Traditional Chinese Medicine, and Chinese cosmology. The author proceeds to delineate the morals and ideals of a Confucian life and its foundation in feelings of familial intimacy and its human-centered religiousness. These ideas are contrasted with the principle and virtue based traditions of the Abrahamic religions as well as of the individualistic tradition beginning in ancient Greece. Lastly, Ames attempts to critically assess the strengths and weaknesses of Confucian role ethics as articulated in the early canonical texts, discussing both its return to prominence and feasibility as a system of ethical conduct for the present day.

Confucian Role Ethics

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Radhanath Swami

Autobiography of an American Swami

Within this extraordinary memoir, Radhanath Swami weaves a colorful tapestry of adventure, mysticism, and love. Readers follow Richard Slavin from the suburbs of Chicago to the caves of the Himalayas as he transforms from young seeker to renowned spiritual guide. The Journey Home is an intimate account of the steps to self-awareness and also a penetrating glimpse into the heart of mystic traditions and the challenges that all souls must face on the road to inner harmony and a union with the Divine. Through near-death encounters, apprenticeships with advanced yogis, and years of travel along the pilgrim’s path, Radhanath Swami eventually reaches the inner sanctum of India’s mystic culture and finds the love he has been seeking. It is a tale told with rare candor, immersing the reader in a journey that is at once engaging, humorous, and heartwarming.

The Journey Home

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Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

Exploring the Path of Bhakti

With illuminating references to Western religions and ideologies, The Journey Within invites readers from all backgrounds to discover the simple truths that unite us.

The mysteries of the soul have evaded mystics, sages, and gurus for centuries. Humanity has long yearned to discover the answer to our existence, and many spiritual traditions have evolved to provide those answers through sacred texts that facilitate journeys of transformation and discovery. Yet, never before have all of the spiritual traditions been distilled so simply into one easy-to-follow path--a path of love and devotion. 

In this long-awaited follow-up to The Journey Home, New York Times bestseller The Journey Within guides readers through the essential teachings of bhakti yoga. World-renowned spiritual leader Radhanath Swami draws from his personal experiences to demystify the ancient devotional path of bhakti, capturing its essence and explaining its simple principles for balancing our lives.

His down-to-earth writing simplifies spiritual concepts and answers timeless questions in a heartfelt narrative that brings this sacred philosophy beautifully to life. What is love? What is the soul? Who is God? How can we live in the physical world without losing touch with the spiritual?

In concise and approachable language, Radhanath Swami sheds light on how to answer these vital questions and offers solutions to life's challenges with the simplest of resources. Reach beyond the material world and journey within to discover the beauty of the true self.

The Journey Within

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Dalai Dalai Lama

Khonton Peljor Lhundrub

Jose Ignacio Cabezon

A correct understanding of the mind's nature is the key to success in meditation and to the profound insights at the heart of the Buddha's path. His Holinesss the Dalai Lama.s overview of the important text at the centre of this book, the Wish-Fulfilling Jewel of the Oral Tradition, distills some of the most central themes of Buddhism.

Meditation on the Nature of Mind

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Gary Alan Scott

Plato's Many Devices

Traditional Plato scholarship, in the English-speaking world, has assumed that Platonic dialogues are merely collections of arguments. Inevitably, the question arises: If Plato wanted to present collections of arguments, why did he write dialogues instead of treatises? Concerned about this question, some scholars have been experimenting with other, more contextualized ways of reading the dialogues. This anthology is among the first to present these new approaches as pursued by a variety of scholars. As such, it offers new perspectives on Plato as well as a suggestive view of Plato scholarship as something of a laboratory for historians of philosophy generally. The essays gathered here each examine vital aspects of Plato’s many methods, considering his dialogues in relation to Thucydides and Homer, narrative strategies and medical practice, images and metaphors. They offer surprising new research into such much-studied works as The Republic as well as revealing views of lesser-known dialogues like the Cratylus and Philebus. With reference to thinkers such as Heidegger, Gadamer, and Sartre, the authors place the Platonic dialogues in an illuminating historical context. Together, their essays should reinvigorate the scholarly examination of the way Plato’s dialogues “work”—and should prompt a reconsideration of how the form of Plato’s philosophical writing bears on the Platonic conception of philosophy.

Philosophy in Dialogue

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Jonathan Haidt

Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion

Why can't our political leaders work together as threats loom and problems mount? Why do people so readily assume the worst about the motives of their fellow citizens? In The Righteous Mind, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt explores the origins of our divisions and points the way forward to mutual understanding.
 
His starting point is moral intuition--the nearly instantaneous perceptions we all have about other people and the things they do. These intuitions feel like self-evident truths, making us righteously certain that those who see things differently are wrong. Haidt shows us how these intuitions differ across cultures, including the cultures of the political left and right. He blends his own research findings with those of anthropologists, historians, and other psychologists to draw a map of the moral domain, and he explains why conservatives can navigate that map more skillfully than can liberals. He then examines the origins of morality, overturning the view that evolution made us fundamentally selfish creatures. But rather than arguing that we are innately altruistic, he makes a more subtle claim--that we are fundamentally groupish. It is our groupishness, he explains, that leads to our greatest joys, our religious divisions, and our political affiliations. In a stunning final chapter on ideology and civility, Haidt shows what each side is right about, and why we need the insights of liberals, conservatives, and libertarians to flourish as a nation.

The Righteous Mind

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James R. Otteson

Actual Ethics offers a moral defense of the 'classical liberal' political tradition and applies it to several of today's vexing moral and political issues. James Otteson argues that a Kantian conception of personhood and an Aristotelian conception of judgment are compatible and even complementary. He shows why they are morally attractive, and perhaps most controversially, when combined, they imply a limited, classical liberal political state. Otteson then addresses several contemporary problems - wealth and poverty, public education, animal welfare, and affirmative action - and shows how each can be plausibly addressed within the Kantian, Aristotelian and classical liberal framework. Written in clear, engaging, and jargon-free prose, Actual Ethics will give students and general audiences an overview of a powerful and rich moral and political tradition that they might not otherwise consider.

Actual Ethics

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Traditional and Contemporary Techniques using Ink and Water 

Chinese Brush Painting

Michael Brunelle

Beatriz Cortabarria

Josep Asuncion

Gemma Guasch

(back cover) CREATIVE TECHNIQUES DRAWING 14 Distinctive Approaches to Drawing with More than 100 Creative Ideas This book will inspire serious students to expand their repertory of techniques and explore fourteen entirely different approaches to drawing that were first pioneered by famous artists of past generations. Students will find step-by-step instructions for each approach. Then they are encouraged to progress beyond simple copying by adapting elements from different approaches to create a language that is distinctively their own. Illustrations of representative drawings derive from original works by distinguished artists as different from each other as the impressionist Edgar Degas, the twentieth-century master Pablo Picasso, the pop artist Robert Rauschenberg, and the abstract expressionist Cy Twombly. Representative works by these and other artists are analyzed and explained in a way that will encourage students to develop exciting new modes of personal expression. Another book in the Creative Techniques series: Oil

Drawing

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An Introduction to Painting Flower

Jean Long

How to Paint the Chinese Way

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Andy Sloss

A Practical Handbook

For over 3,000 years, the blend of Byzantine and early British design known as "Celtic" has fascinated artists. Join them--all you need is a pen and graph paper! Master these simple patterns, then invent your own variations: create borders, finish the edges around a repeating design, and incorporate spirals into geometric patterns. "With the recent resurgence in Celtic art, music, and dance, a book like this could be useful as a sourcebook for...artists, designers, and craftspeople."-- "Library Journal . 192 pages, 200 b/w illus., 7 1/2 x 9 1/2.

How to Draw Celtic Key Patterns

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Henry P. Bowie

On the Laws of Japanese Painting

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Heavy Hardcover (2 to 4 lbs)

The Complete Watercolor Artist

Ferdinand Petrie

John Shaw

Depict the play of light on spring foliage silhouetted against a dark sky. Paint a vivid sunset over a lake. Capture the drama of waves surging toward the shore. The Big Book of Painting Nature in Watercolor provides 135 stimulating demonstrations in painting trees, skies, and water from beautiful photographs by one of the world's leading nature photographers. This book will be invaluable to landscape artists. The 600 magnificent illustrations and engaging text cover the entire range of watercolor techniques and give the artist in-depth instruction in painting beautiful images of the natural world in all seasons, weather, geographical variety, and at every time of day. Many of the lessons are followed by assignments designed to help you apply what you have just learned to new situations. The Big Book of Painting Nature in Watercolor is a must for everyone who wants to master the techniques for becoming a first-rate landscape painter.

The Big Book of Painting Nature in Watercolor

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Rose Samson

Browse by categories

Nick Blishen

Acoustic Guitar Making

Richard F. Burton

Favorite Tales from the Arabian Nights' Entertainments

Niccolo Machiavelli

The Prince and Other Writings

José María Parramón

Drawing with Crayons, Pastels, Sanguine and Chalks

Lee Hammond

Amazing Crayon Drawing with Lee Hammond

Ray Campbell Smith

An Introduction to Acrylics

Jelbert

Leisure Arts Creative Acrylic Techniques

Lewis Vaughn

Writing Philosophy

F. Peart

Ready to Paint Tulips in Watercolour

Roger T. Ames

Confucian Role Ethics

Radhanath Swami

The Journey Home

Radhanath Swami

The Journey Within

Dalai Dalai Lama; Khonton Peljor Lhundrub; Jose Ignacio Cabezon

Meditation on the Nature of Mind

Gary Alan Scott

Philosophy in Dialogue

Jonathan Haidt

The Righteous Mind

James R. Otteson

Actual Ethics

Jane Dwight

Chinese Brush Painting

Michael Brunelle; Beatriz Cortabarria; Josep Asuncion; Gemma Guasch

Drawing

Elizabeth Harden

An Introduction to Painting Flower

Jean Long

How to Paint the Chinese Way

Andy Sloss

How to Draw Celtic Key Patterns

Henry P. Bowie

On the Laws of Japanese Painting

Sally Harper

The Complete Watercolor Artist

Ferdinand Petrie; John Shaw

The Big Book of Painting Nature in Watercolor

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