Healing the Body and Spirit

Readers seeking a starting point for developing a spiritual practice may find helpful advice in The Spiritual Activist: Practices to Transform Your Life, Your Work, and Your World. Author Claudia Horwitz is the founder of stone circles, a North Carolina—based organization that integrates faith, spirituality and social justice. Here, she charts a course that moves from "refuge" (finding inner strength) to "union" (reaching out at home and at work) and "embrace" (finding a connection in the outside world). Her book includes useful tips ("spiritual quick hits"), practical suggestions and worksheets. Interviews with socially conscious leaders, such as Mahatma Gandhi's grandson, that add to Horwitz's own counsel. (Penguin Compass, $16 paper 256p ISBN 0-14-219606-1; Aug.)

Clifford Williams's latest book, Daybreakers: 365 Eye-Opening Reflections, offers an entire year's worth of mantras and concepts for overcoming spiritual ambivalence. Beginning with Week 1 (which covers "pursuing the eternal") and running through Week 52 ("living for eternity"), Williams (With All That We Have Why Aren't We Satisfied?) focuses on themes such as restlessness and letting go. Each week offers a short explanation of the theme, then gives a specific phrase to ruminate on each day. The entries are not date-specific, so readers may begin the book at any time during the calendar year. (Sorin, $10.95 paper 128p ISBN 1-893732-52-5; Aug.)

Reiki, a method of natural healing based on the application of life force energy (called "chi"), has its roots in pre—WWII Japan. Asserting that the practice is easy to learn and use, reiki instructor John Tompkins Jr. offers Mastering Reiki: A Practicing and Teaching Primer. Covering history, principles and symbols, the book will appeal to reiki practitioners who want to expand their understanding. Illustrations, worksheets and an appendix discussing the incorporation of sound, color and stones with reiki complement Tompkins's simple text. (Llewellyn, $14.95 paper 176p ISBN 0-7387-0206-4; June)

"We should regard ourselves as pilgrims following an inner journey that is beautiful, scary, and sometimes difficult," says Tibetan Bön medicine practitioner Christopher Hansard. The Tibetan Art of Living: Wise Body, Mind, Life aims to assist readers on that journey by explaining how Tibetan medicine can foster wisdom, health and well-being. Hansard, director of clinical affairs at London's Eden Medical Center, carefully describes ways to incorporate this system of healing into everyday life, through dietary guidelines, herbal remedies, massage and other means. (Pocket, $25 304p ISBN 0-7434-5146-5; June 4)

Wisdom That's Par for the Course

Golfers with a taste for chicken soup will appreciate Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen, Jeff Aubery and Mark and Chrissy Donnelly's Chicken Soup for the Golfer's Soul: The 2nd Round: More Stories of Insight, Inspiration and Laughter on the Links. In the introduction, the authors explain how golf is like a mirror that "surrounds our every shot, decision and intention on the course, and reflects it back in perfect clarity." From there, chapters entitled "Going for the Green," "Out of the Rough" and "Golf Links a Family Together" discuss the reflective nature of the sport. These pieces are alternately funny, thoughtful and poignant. (Health Communications, $12.95 paper 368p ISBN 1-55874-982-9; May)

Both the father and the son of pro golfers, and a golf instructor and Senior PGA pro in his own right, Bob Duval shares the wisdom he's accumulated from years on the course in Letters to a Young Golfer. The book takes the form of actual letters to his son, David—a PGA celebrity and 2001 British Open champion—and to other friends and family members. The subject on the table is usually golf—Duval muses about strategies and looks back on his own career and encounters with PGA luminaries—but through the letters a more intimate history of the family emerges, including the father and son's long estrangement, sparked by the death of David's older brother. (Basic, $22 176p ISBN 0-465-01738-X; May)

July Publication

The first serious English-language biography of the influential Italian opera composer (1863—1945), Pietro Mascagni and His Operas traces the career of this flamboyant figure of fascist-era Italian culture. Author Alan Mallach, a pianist, composer and independent scholar, makes a case for the maestro's lesser-known operas, such as L'Amico Fritz, Guglielmo Ratcliff, Iris, Parisina and Il Piccolo Marat. He also documents Mascagni's talent for alienating everyone in his life, from his long-time mistress to Il Duce himself. The book includes a useful discography skewed toward recent recordings of Mascagni's works. While the book might be a little too insider for readers new to opera, enthusiasts will surely take notice. (Northeastern Univ., $35 384p ISBN 1-55553-524-0)

June Publications

Prolific humorist Patrick McManus (The Deer on a Bicycle) offers another winsome collection of anecdotes and essays on fishing, camping, hunting and other outdoor activities and catastrophes. Childhood hijinks loom especially large in The Bear in the Attic: McManus recalls youthful culinary misadventures that culminated in a rock-hard loaf of bread useful only as a football; faking a cold so that he could finish an overdue book report—only to take a disastrous impromptu fishing trip with the eccentric neighborhood woodsman; and other mischief-making. McManus also intersperses more recent tales of the sporting life—as well as family life—in his native North Idaho. (Holt, $22 240p ISBN 0-8050-7078-8)

Weary of urban life, essayist Cathleen Miller (Desert Flower) and her husband abandon San Francisco for an old house in rural Pennsylvania. In The Birdhouse Chronicles: Surviving the Joys of Country Life, Miller recounts the ensuing challenges, from keeping the wood-and-coal furnace stoked on frigid mornings, to burying the previous owner's shag carpeting, to staring down a wild mink. The move also dredges up memories of her childhood in small-town Missouri and her mother's suicide at 33, possibly triggered by the family's move from the country into town. Miller's musings are on the earnest side, but packed with vivid, textured details of country exile. (Lyons, $24.95 256p ISBN 1-58574-469-7)

He's probably not the spokesperson the South Florida tourism council had in mind, but his new collection of 40 brisk, witty essays proves that poet and crime novelist James W. Hall (Blackwater Sound) is one of the region's biggest—and most thoughtful—boosters. Hot Damn!: Alligators in the Casino, Nude Women in the Grass, How Seashells Changed the Course of History, and Other Dispatches from Paradise includes pieces on television, heat waves, hurricanes and, of course, the writing life, all set against the backdrop of his beloved adopted state. Hall confesses a deep-seated envy of Florida natives; traces the epidemiology of suburban sprawl in "Disney Virus"; and recounts his wife's violent carjacking. (St. Martin's, $24.95 256p ISBN 0-312-28859-X)

The 17 erudite and accessible essays in Opera, Sex, and Other Vital Matters probe Stanford University humanities professor Paul Robinson's (Gay Lives) long-time obsessions—the two named in the title, plus a third: Sigmund Freud. In both previously published and new pieces, Robinson weighs in on such matters as Orientalism in Aida; Richard Strauss's maligned later works; opera queens; sex studies; Freud and feminism; sexuality in Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four; and the strange, compelling qualities of cats. Whether arguing that Beethoven's Fidelio is actually the orchestrated history of the French Revolution or considering student-teacher relationships, Robinson offers both intimate anecdotes and a whirlwind tours through modern intellectual history. (Univ. of Chicago, $18 paper 322p ISBN 0-226-72183-3)