This is the true story of Charles Langley, an Englishman from London, who became apprentice to a powerful Navajo Indian medicine man in the remote desert of the American Southwest. His early experiences of Navajo witchcraft, divination and healing, and of the visions induced by the peyote cactus, proved so remarkable and so other-worldly, he quickly realized that others would have difficulty believing them. Encouraged by the medicine man Blue Horse, and using skills honed as a top British journalist, Langley began to keep a detailed diary of the extraordinary events he witnessed in the company of this powerful American Indian medicine man. It is from these diaries, nearly half a million words in length-- much of which must remain secret--that this compelling first person account has been crafted. Readers will learn of the daily fight against witches and witchcraft. Of skin walkers, who are human shape shifters the Navajo believe can turn themselves into animals and birds; of visions, and of extraordinary feats of divination and healing, as well as fascinating insights into the unique culture of the Navajo tribe. As Blue Horse's apprentice, Langley finds himself inhabiting a parallel world filled with exactly the kind of ancient mysticism and beliefs that his western upbringing and education have taught him to scoff at. But which increasingly become the everyday reality of his life. Eventually, he must choose either to continue his big city existence, with its comfortable lifestyle and preconceptions, or accept that the terrifying world of Navajo witchcraft is real and that, despite the risks, he must explore it to the end.

This is the true story of how a chance meeting with a young Navajo Indian propels an English traveler out of his professional life and into the world of North American Indian Medicine Men. A world where people genuinely believe that witchcraft can bring ruin, even death, and only traditional medicine men have the knowledge to lift the curses and restore the sick to health. This is the Second Edition of the acclaimed Meeting the Medicine Men, with much extra material and detail supplied by Charles Langley from his field notes and diaries. As apprentice to the powerful Navajo medicine man Blue Horse, he was shown how to fight witchcraft, divine the past, present and future, and cure the sick. This book is a unique record of ancient learning and knowledge that have survived into the 21st century, but now seem doomed by the remorseless onslaught of the modern world. The story continues in Volume 2, Spirit Land: The Peyote Diaries, also available on Amazon and Kindle.

A Passionate Memoir about Life with a Teenage Daughter with Severe Autism, Following the Progress of Acclaimed Book, Finding Lina. Like her passionate first book, Finding Lina, about her daughter with severe autism, Helena Hjalmarsson brings an intensity of purpose and love to her second memoir about Lina, Beyond Autism. Lina’s world is one of excruciating challenges. Helena’s world is the same, but with her own insights, indominable spirit, and amazing clarity she sheds light and hope for other parents, siblings and caretakers of children with autism, as well as the children with autism themselves. She unflinchingly examines “the paradoxical nature of autism, the never-ending mystery of who our children are and how they got here, in the middle of this unfathomable hurricane of leaky guts, inflammation, yeast, autoimmune disorders, seizures, sensory breakdown, loss of words, physical freedom, sleep, friends, normal life as we are used to refer to it.” Beyond Autism is one of an increasing number of “you are not alone” literary statements from parents of children with autism forwarded to the people whose lives, similarly, often blocks the view of the larger community. Beyond Autism is intended to be a meeting place, of sorts. A smile of recognition. A reason for a little dark joke amongst parents. What Helena recognizes is that whenever Lina is not in mayhem, she is in heaven. “In those times she seems so free of the burdens of a past and a future, so deeply present and accepting of the moment …Whenever she is not suffering, it seems to me that she is at that enlightened, awakened place that most people struggle for a whole life time to catch a glimpse of.” It’s that glimpse that Helene explores, and shares for all those who want, too, to catch and gain insight into the lives of those with autism and those who love them.

In this fascinating real-life adventure, a chance meeting with a young Navajo Indian propels an English traveler out of his middle-class London life and into the world of North American Indian Medicine Men. Here, people firmly believe that witchcraft can bring ruin, even death, and only Medicine Men have the knowledge to do battle with evil, lift curses and restore the sick to health. Blue Horse is one of a dwindling band of Medicine Men traveling the vast Navajo nation of New Mexico and Arizona. Charles Langley, a former London newspaper executive, becomes his â??bag carrierâ? and chauffeur and eventually his trainee. He sees the Medicine Man perform feats: foretelling the future, uncovering the hidden past and communicating with spirits. Vowing not to leave his brains at the teepee door, Langley studies the accumulating evidence that Medicine Men really can cure the sick, change events of long ago and influence the future. Across the breathtaking Southwest landscape and along the fabled Route 66, he meets startling characters and gains rare access into ancient healing traditions.

This “standard text of the defining era of gay literati” tells the cultural history of the interconnected lives of the 20th century's most influential gay writers (Philadelphia Inquirer). In the years following World War II a group of gay writers established themselves as major cultural figures in American life. Truman Capote, the enfant terrible, whose finely wrought fiction and nonfiction captured the nation's imagination. Gore Vidal, the wry, withering chronicler of politics, sex, and history. Tennessee Williams, whose powerful plays rocketed him to the top of the American theater. James Baldwin, the harrowingly perceptive novelist and social critic. Christopher Isherwood, the English novelist who became a thoroughly American novelist. And the exuberant Allen Ginsberg, whose poetry defied censorship and exploded minds. Together, their writing introduced America to gay experience and sensibility, and changed our literary culture. But the change was only beginning. A new generation of gay writers followed, taking more risks and writing about their sexuality more openly. Edward Albee brought his prickly iconoclasm to the American theater. Edmund White laid bare his own life in stylized, autobiographical works. Armistead Maupin wove a rich tapestry of the counterculture, queer and straight. Mart Crowley brought gay men's lives out of the closet and onto the stage. And Tony Kushner took them beyond the stage, to the center of American ideas. With authority and humor, Christopher Bram weaves these men's ambitions, affairs, feuds, loves, and appetites into a single sweeping narrative. Chronicling over fifty years of momentous change-from civil rights to Stonewall to AIDS and beyond. Eminent Outlaws is an inspiring, illuminating tale: one that reveals how the lives of these men are crucial to understanding the social and cultural history of the American twentieth century.

During the Cold War, freedom of expression was vaunted as liberal democracy’s most cherished possession—but such freedom was put in service of a hidden agenda. In The Cultural Cold War, Frances Stonor Saunders reveals the extraordinary efforts of a secret campaign in which some of the most vocal exponents of intellectual freedom in the West were working for or subsidized by the CIA—whether they knew it or not. Called "the most comprehensive account yet of the [CIA’s] activities between 1947 and 1967" by the New York Times, the book presents shocking evidence of the CIA’s undercover program of cultural interventions in Western Europe and at home, drawing together declassified documents and exclusive interviews to expose the CIA’s astonishing campaign to deploy the likes of Hannah Arendt, Isaiah Berlin, Leonard Bernstein, Robert Lowell, George Orwell, and Jackson Pollock as weapons in the Cold War. Translated into ten languages, this classic work—now with a new preface by the author—is "a real contribution to popular understanding of the postwar period" (The Wall Street Journal), and its story of covert cultural efforts to win hearts and minds continues to be relevant today.

Provides a social history of how the CIA used the psychedelic drug LSD as a tool of espionage during the early 1950s and tested it on U.S. citizens before it spread into popular culture, in particular the counterculture as represented by Timothy Leary, Allen Ginsberg, Ken Kesey, and others who helped spawn political and social upheaval.