Poet and biologist Baxter Trautman's evocative work of natural history reveals how the world of science connects with the world's of history, myth and the human spirit.

Many spend their entire lifetime traversing the landscape of the valley. Unknown to multitudes, the devil has programmed the majority to the tail region.The mystery of the spirit of the valley is exposed. This book offers a lifetime opportunity to everyone who wants to come out of the valley and move to the mountain top. This book is a must read. It is readable, rewarding and didactic.

A young woman, Lindsey Wei, graduates from high school in America and sets out to find her roots in China, questing for who she is and where her life path belongs. She discovers in herself a skill for martial arts and seeks the hidden knowledge of meditation. After three years of study in various martial styles and unveiling false teachers, she is finally led to the ancient Wudang Mountains. Here she meets a Daoist recluse, Li Shi Fu, who has renounced the world of the 'red dust' and long since retired into an isolated temple to cast oracles and read the stars. The coming together of these two extraordinary characters, master and disciple, begins a spiritual relationship taking the young adept on an unforgettable journey through the light and dark sides of modern China and deep into herself. Battling between earthly desires and heavenly knowledge, she makes the transformation into a dynamic and complete woman. A coming-of-age, personal account, the book describes the lived experiences of a profoundly sincere, bitter yet ultimately liberating female quest. It is written for anyone who ponders the true meaning of Chinese wisdom and the way of the Dao in the hope of discovering a deeper strength within themselves.

A child of a typical 1950s suburb unearths her mother's hidden heritage, launching a rich and magical exploration of her own identity and her family's powerful Native American past.

“This fascinating, well-written book explores how tequila has come to symbolize what it means to be Mexican . . . A must read.” —Choice ¡Tequila! Distilling the Spirit of Mexico traces how and why tequila became Mexico’s national drink and symbol. Starting in Mexico’s colonial era and tracing the drink’s rise through the present day, Marie Sarita Gaytán reveals the formative roles played by some unlikely characters—such as the revolutionary Pancho Villa, who was himself a teetotaler. She also shows how tequila’s cultural status was shaped by US-Mexican relations, the tourism industry, shifting gender roles, technology, regulation, film, music, and literature. Like all stories about national symbols, the rise of tequila forms a complicated, unexpected, and poignant tale. By unraveling its inner workings, Gaytán encourages us to think critically about national symbols more generally—especially the ways they both reveal and conceal—to tell a story about a place, a culture, and a people. In many ways, the story of tequila is the story of Mexico.