August Turak is a successful entrepreneur, corporate executive, and award-winning author who attributes much of his success to living and working alongside the Trappist monks of Mepkin Abbey for seventeen years. As a frequent monastic guest, he learned firsthand from the monks as they grew an incredibly successful portfolio of businesses. Service and selflessness are at the heart of the 1,500-year-old monastic tradition's remarkable business success. It is an ancient though immensely relevant economic model that preserves what is positive and productive about capitalism while transcending its ethical limitations and internal contradictions. Combining vivid case studies from his thirty-year business career with intimate portraits of the monks at work, Turak shows how Trappist principles can be successfully applied to a variety of secular business settings and to our personal lives as well. He demonstrates that monks and people like Warren Buffett are wildly successful not despite their high principles but because of them. Turak also introduces other "transformational organizations" that share the crucial monastic business strategies so critical for success.

Describes life at a Trappist monastery in South Carolina, and discusses the nature of the monastic experience.

A blend of case history, anecdote, history, and spiritual quest, this intimate and fascinating look at the world's oldest and most reclusive monastic order provides a rare understanding of day-to-day Trappist existence.

Monastic life and its counter-cultural wisdom come alive in the stories and lessons of Br. Paul Quenon, O.C.S.O., during his more than five decades as a Trappist at the Abbey of Gethsemani. He served as a novice under Thomas Merton and he also welcomed some of the monastery's more well-known visitors, including Sr. Helen Prejean and Seamus Heaney, to Merton's hermitage. In Praise of the Useless Life includes Quenon's quiet reflections on what it means to live each day with careful attentiveness. The humble peace and simplicity of the monastery and of Quenon's daily life are beautifully portrayed in this memoir. Whether it be through the daily routine of the monastery, his love of the outdoors no matter the season, or his lively and interesting conversations with visitors (reciting Emily Dickinson with Pico Iyer, discussing Merton and poetry with Czeslaw Milosz), Quenon's gentle musings display his love for the beauty in his vocation and the people he’s encountered along the way. Inspired by his novice master Merton, the poet and photographer’s stories remind us that the beauty of life can best be seen in the "uselessness" of daily life—having a quiet chat with a friend, spending time in contemplation—in our vocations, and in the memories we make along the way.

Discover what makes the heavenly brews of Belgium so good in this new book by long time Real Beer Page Editor Stan Hieronymus. In Brew Like a Monk, he details the beers and brewing of the famous Trappist producers along with dozens of others from both Belgium and America. Sip along as you read and, if you feel yourself divinely inspired to brew some of your own, try out the tips and recipes as well!

This story starts with a kid by watching television heard the theory that the Earth will be consumed by the sun, the fear of this caused an incredible journey, from the Moon to the center of The Milky way, and the inventions of a group of people that made journey possible. Joseph Stine is the main character; he developed a new computer system using Nanites. He called the system MANN, this system morphs into the main character over thousands of years of evolution of the Nanites, this happened due to Joe experimenting on himself with medical Nanites to keep him strong and healthy. He sold a copy of MANN to the U.S government, but felt he needed a way to control MANN and MANN 2, and creates a Special Nanite, implanted into himself and his daughter Crystal, Joe wanted to use Nanites for the good of Mankind, Crystal not so much. Joe goes to the far reaches of space, Crystal stayed behind on Earth and became a dictator, but was killed by an act of God. That bothered Joe and he would think of it often. On the space craft named “Home”, the Joe and the crew slept for 20 years in a Hybercell and would wake up for a week at a time, over hundreds of years Joe convinced the crew to agree to enhancing themselves with Nanites for their health and wellbeing. They agree, and their evolution began. They colonize a planet, and find life on exo-planets, some odd, some awfully familiar. Alien life that had depleted their home planet of everything and forced to recycle minerals, and everything they needed from other places. In order for Joe to get their technology he infected them with Nanites, speeding transportation to faster than the speed of light. A thousand years later Joe, no longer existed, and had become Special. Special then evolves into a mass of Nanites and after a few thousand years they try to return to Earth, but something was keeping them away. Special makes a final attempt to escape to gravity of Sagittarius A*, when it meets God.