Search results for ""Author David Gordon""

David Gordon White excavates and seeks to centre within its broader Indian context the lost tradition of the medieval Siddhas. This comprehensive study draws upon the ancient Sanskrit and medieval Hindu materials and asserts medieval traditions of Hindu alchemy and "hatha yoga" were practiced by one and the same people, and that they can only be understood when viewed together.

Read more less

Joe the Bouncer's search for a stolen racing pigeon sends him into a warren of assassins in this thrilling caper from David Gordon. Harvard dropout and ex-Special Forces operative Joe Brody is climbing the ranks in the criminal underworld. After successfully executing multiple missions for the various crime syndicates that run New York City, he has come to earn the trust and respect of the city’s most dangerous denizens. Which is why his newest task — retrieving a pet pigeon snatched from a rooftop coop in Brooklyn — has Joe puzzled … until he learns that the bird is valued at close to a million dollars. Joe hatches a plan to sneak into the luxury apartment building where the pigeon is held captive. But the plan takes a deadly turn when he stumbles upon a nest of international war criminals. Fearing that Joe's entry into the building has somehow compromised their nefarious scheme, they put a bounty on his head. In New York, Joe is untouchable, but his new foes come from outside the flock, and he’ll need a wing and a prayer to elude their assassins. Reviewers on David Gordon 'David Gordon brings an outstanding new voice to the contemporary crime novel.' Robert Crais 'A unique and worthwhile series' CrimeReads 'Gordon knows how to write a potboiler.' LA Times 'In the caper tradition popularized by Donald E. Westlake and Lawrence Block, Gordon uses humour to good effect.' Publishers Weekly

Read more less

Joe the Bouncer seeks the killer of NYC's most desirable call girls in the newest thriller in David Gordon's acclaimed series. Joe Brody, ex-Special Forces operative suffering post-traumatic stress syndrome so severe that it turned him to drug and alcohol abuse, is getting his life back together. Living with his grandmother in Queens, Joe has taken what should be a simple job as a bouncer at a strip club, where he can spend his nights reading the classics. The only catch is that his childhood friend Gio Caprisi, now head of New York's Italian Mafia, relies on Joe's extra-legal expertise when things get particularly nasty on the streets. Recently, New York's criminal underworld has been shaken by the disappearance of its most successful call girls. As a pattern emerges, what might otherwise appear to be a choice to pursue a new life comes to resemble something more troublesome – the work of a serial kidnapper. When a woman turns up dead, the hunt for the predator behind it all becomes even more urgent. To find the killer, Joe will have to plunge into the seediest fringes of Manhattan and its surrounding boroughs on another wild ride. Reviews for David Gordon 'David Gordon brings an outstanding new voice to the contemporary crime novel' Robert Crais 'A unique and worthwhile series' CrimeReads 'Gordon knows how to write a potboiler' LA Times

Read more less

As David White explains in the Introduction to Tantra in Practice, Tantra is an Asian body of beliefs and practices that seeks to channel the divine energy that grounds the universe, in creative and liberating ways. The subsequent chapters reflect the wide geographical and temporal scope of Tantra by examining thirty-six texts from China, India, Japan, Nepal, and Tibet, ranging from the seventh century to the present day, and representing the full range of Tantric experience--Buddhist, Hindu, Jain, and even Islamic. Each text has been chosen and translated, often for the first time, by an international expert in the field who also provides detailed background material. Students of Asian religions and general readers alike will find the book rich and informative. The book includes plays, transcribed interviews, poetry, parodies, inscriptions, instructional texts, scriptures, philosophical conjectures, dreams, and astronomical speculations, each text illustrating one of the diverse traditions and practices of Tantra. Thus, the nineteenth-century Indian Buddhist Garland of Gems, a series of songs, warns against the illusion of appearance by referring to bees, yogurt, and the fire of Malaya Mountain; while fourteenth-century Chinese Buddhist manuscripts detail how to prosper through the Seven Stars of the Northern Dipper by burning incense, making offerings to scriptures, and chanting incantations. In a transcribed conversation, a modern Hindu priest in Bengal candidly explains how he serves the black Goddess Kali and feeds temple skulls lentils, wine, or rice; a seventeenth-century Nepalese Hindu praise-poem hammered into the golden doors to the temple of the Goddess Taleju lists a king's faults and begs her forgiveness and grace. An introduction accompanies each text, identifying its period and genre, discussing the history and influence of the work, and identifying points of particular interest or difficulty. The first book to bring together texts from the entire range of Tantric phenomena, Tantra in Practice continues the Princeton Readings in Religions series. The breadth of work included, geographic areas spanned, and expert scholarship highlighting each piece serve to expand our understanding of what it means to practice Tantra.

Read more less

Yoga is a body of practice that spans two millennia and transcends the boundaries of any single religion, geographic region, or teaching lineage. In fact, over the centuries there have been many "yogas"--yogas of battlefield warriors, of itinerant minstrels and beggars, of religious reformers, and of course, the yogas of mind and body so popular today. Yoga in Practice is an anthology of primary texts drawn from the diverse yoga traditions of India, greater Asia, and the West. This one-of-a-kind sourcebook features elegant translations of Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, and even Islamic yogic writings, many of them being made available in English for the very first time. Collected here are ancient, colonial, and modern texts reflecting a broad range of genres, from an early medical treatise in Sanskrit to Upanishadic verses on sacred sounds; from a Tibetan catechetical dialogue to funerary and devotional songs still sung in India today; and from a 1930s instructional guide by the grandfather of contemporary yoga to the private papers of a pioneer of tantric yoga in America. Emphasizing the lived experiences to be found in the many worlds of yoga, Yoga in Practice includes David Gordon White's informative general introduction as well as concise introductions to each reading by the book's contributors.

Read more less

A special forces agent-turned-strip club bouncer with a side hustle as a hitman for the New York mob seeks out a deadly drug lord in the poppy fields of Afghanistan. Joe Brody is just your average ex-Special Ops, Dostoevsky-reading, PTSD-suffering strip club bouncer living with his grandma in Queens. It would be a simple life, but for his childhood friend the Mafia boss, his other job as fixer for the most powerful crime families in town, and his cloying drug habit. Joe is sent to take out a shadowy figure named Zahir, who has been hijacking heroin bound for U.S. dealers and funneling the money to terror cells. So Joe finds himself back in the one place in the world he doesn't want to revisit: the poppy fields of Afghanistan, a country that left permanent scars on his body as well as his psyche. If he were alone, his past demons might be too much to bear – but luckily his occasional partner Yelena, a master thief wanted from Brighton Beach to Moscow, is by his side. Soon the Five Boroughs are on the verge of an all-out drug war. Joe's only chance to calm the violence is to intercept the newest shipment of Zahir's product – if his skills prove up to the task. Reviews for David Gordon: 'Gordon brings an outstanding new voice to the contemporary crime novel' Robert Crais 'Gordon knows how to write a potboiler' LA Times

Read more less

The hotly anticipated sequel to David Gordon's The Bouncer. For readers who like high-calibre humour mixed with their hard crime, here's a brilliant, pyrotechnic thriller from a fresh virtuoso of the crime caper genre. Ex-black-ops-specialist-turned-strip-club-bouncer Joe Brody has a new qualification to add to his resume: he's the 'sheriff' for an alliance of New York City's mob bosses. In the straight world, you call the cops – in the underworld, you call Joe. He's detoxing – too much of the hard stuff – at the clinic of a Chinese herbalist when the call comes in: the bosses need Joe to help them with – ironically – a high-end heroin problem. A new drug dealer is in town and the bosses think they might be an Al Quaeda splinter group, trading dope for diamonds to fund a major-league terrorist atrocity. And that would just be bad for business. Joe has a plan. He's a man who knows how to take down a terrorist cell. But first he needs a hit of the hard stuff – diamonds, this time – and lots of them... Praise for The Bouncer: 'Clever plotting and a light-hearted tone add charm to this lively caper despite its multiple violent deaths... Lots of fun' SUNDAY TIMES 'The Bouncer will toss you over his shoulder like King Kong and carry you away' MAX ALLAN COLLINS 'David Gordon brings an outstanding new voice to the contemporary crime novel' ROBERT CRAIS

Read more less

Joe the Bouncer seeks the killer of NYC's most desirable call girls in the newest thriller in David Gordon's acclaimed series. Joe Brody, ex-Special Forces operative suffering post-traumatic stress syndrome so severe that it turned him to drug and alcohol abuse, is getting his life back together. Living with his grandmother in Queens, Joe has taken what should be a simple job as a bouncer at a strip club, where he can spend his nights reading the classics. The only catch is that his childhood friend Gio Caprisi, now head of New York's Italian Mafia, relies on Joe's extra-legal expertise when things get particularly nasty on the streets. Recently, New York's criminal underworld has been shaken by the disappearance of its most successful call girls. As a pattern emerges, what might otherwise appear to be a choice to pursue a new life comes to resemble something more troublesome – the work of a serial kidnapper. When a woman turns up dead, the hunt for the predator behind it all becomes even more urgent. To find the killer, Joe will have to plunge into the seediest fringes of Manhattan and its surrounding boroughs on another wild ride. Reviews for David Gordon 'David Gordon brings an outstanding new voice to the contemporary crime novel' Robert Crais 'A unique and worthwhile series' CrimeReads 'Gordon knows how to write a potboiler' LA Times

Read more less

If you like a heavy dose of mayhem with their murder, this is crime fiction at its most fresh and most fun. Joe Brody is just your average Dostoevsky-reading, Harvard-expelled strip club bouncer who has a highly classified military history and a best friend from Catholic school who happens to be head mafioso Gio Caprisi. FBI agent Donna Zamora, the best shot in her class at Quantico, is a single mother stuck at a desk manning the hotline. Their storylines intersect over a tip from a cokehead that leads to a crackdown on Gio's strip joint in Queens and Joe's arrest. Outside the jailhouse, the Fed and the bouncer lock eyes, as Gordon launches them both headlong into a non-stop plot that goes from back-road gun running to high-stakes perfume heist, and manages to touch everyone from the CIA to the Triads. Beneath it all lurks a sinister criminal mastermind whose manipulations could cause chaos on a massively violent scale. 'A brilliantly goofy caper novel in the grand tradition of Donald E. Westlake' NEW YORK TIMES. '[David Gordon], who has been turning out delightfully offbeat tales of fringe crooks with plenty of pizzazz (The Serialist, 2010; Mystery Girl, 2013), now stakes his claim as a major player in the comic-thriller world' BOOKLIST, Starred Review.

Read more less

A special forces agent-turned-strip club bouncer with a side hustle as a hitman for the New York mob seeks out a deadly drug lord in the poppy fields of Afghanistan.

Read more less

"An impressive and important cross-cultural study that has vast implications for history, religion, anthropology, folklore, and other fields. . . . Remarkably wide-ranging and extremely well-documented, it covers (among much else) the following: medieval Christian legends such as the 14th-century Ethiopian Gadla Hawaryat (Contendings of the Apostles) that had their roots in Parthian Gnosticism and Manichaeism; dog-stars (especially Sirius), dog-days, and canine psychopomps in the ancient and Hellenistic world; the cynocephalic hordes of the ancient geographers; the legend of Prester John; Visvamitra and the Svapacas ("Dog-Cookers"); the Dog Rong ("warlike barbarians") during the Xia, Shang, and Zhou periods; the nochoy ghajar (Mongolian for "Dog Country") of the Khitans; the Panju myth of the Southern Man and Yao "barbarians" from chapter 116 of the History of the Latter Han and variants in a series of later texts; and the importance of dogs in ancient Chinese burial rites. . . . Extremely well-researched and highly significant."—Victor H. Mair, Asian Folklore Studies

Read more less

Since the 1960s, yoga has become a billion-dollar industry in the West, attracting housewives and hipsters, New Agers and the old-aged. But our modern conception of yoga derives much from nineteenth-century European spirituality, and the true story of yoga's origins in South Asia is far richer, stranger, and more entertaining than most of us realize. To uncover this history, David Gordon White focuses on yoga's practitioners. Combing through millennia of South Asia's vast and diverse literature, he discovers that yogis are usually portrayed as wonder-workers or sorcerers who use their dangerous supernatural abilities - which can include raising the dead, possession, and levitation - to acquire power, wealth, and sexual gratification. As White shows, even those yogis who aren't downright villainous bear little resemblance to Western assumptions about them. By turns rollicking and sophisticated, "Sinister Yogis" tears down the image of yogis as detached, contemplative teachers, finally placing them in their proper context.

Read more less

With "Kiss of the Yogini", David Gordon White sweeps away centuries of misunderstandings and misrepresentations, returning to original texts, images, and ritual practices to reconstruct the history of South Asian Tantra from the medieval period to the present day. "Kiss of the Yogini" contains White's own translations from over a dozen Tantras that have never before been translated into any European language. It will prove to be the definitive work for anyone seeking to understand Tantra and the crucial role it has played in South Asian history, society, culture, and religion.

Read more less

World poverty is an important book offering fresh insights into how to tackle poverty worldwide. With contributions from leading scholars in the field both internationally and in the UK, the book asks whether existing international and national policies are likely to succeed in reducing poverty across the world. It concludes that they are not and that a radically different international strategy is needed. This book is a companion volume to Breadline Europe: The measurement of poverty (The Policy Press, 2001). The focus of World poverty is on anti-poverty policies rather than the scale, causes and measurement of poverty. A wide range of countries is discussed including countries such as China and India, which have rarely been covered elsewhere. The interests of the industrialised and developing world are given equal attention and are analysed together. Policies intended to operate at different levels - international, regional, national and sub-national - ranging from the policies of international agencies like the UN and the World Bank through to national governments, groups of governments and local and city authorities - are examined. Key aspects of social policy, like 'targeting' and means-testing, de-regulation and privatisation, are considered in detail. World poverty will become a definitive point of reference for anyone working, studying or researching in the poverty field. Studies in poverty, inequality and social exclusion series Series Editor: David Gordon, Director, Townsend Centre for International Poverty Research. Poverty, inequality and social exclusion remain the most fundamental problems that humanity faces in the 21st century. This exciting series, published in association with the Townsend Centre for International Poverty Research at the University of Bristol, aims to make cutting-edge poverty related research more widely available. For other titles in this series, please follow the series link from the main catalogue page.

Read more less

The rise, fall, and modern resurgence of an enigmatic book revered by yoga enthusiasts around the worldConsisting of fewer than two hundred verses written in an obscure if not impenetrable language and style, Patanjali's Yoga Sutra is extolled by the yoga establishment as a perennial classic and guide to yoga practice—except it isn't. Virtually forgotten in India for hundreds of years and maligned when it was first discovered in the West, the Yoga Sutra has been elevated to its present iconic status only in the course of the past forty years. David Gordon White retraces the strange and circuitous journey of this confounding work from its ancient origins to today, bringing to life the improbable cast of characters whose interpretations and misappropriations of the Yoga Sutra led to its revered place in contemporary popular culture.

Read more less

Whether creating enormous exhibition spaces or designing living quarters for collectors and homes and studio facilities for artists, the acclaimed architect Max Gordon (1931-1990) shaped the physical settings of art in the world's major metropolises during his influential career. Following several decades of work with leading architectural firms in New York and London (during which he designed the headquarters of New Scotland Yard), in the early 1980s Gordon designed the first Saatchi Gallery in London, and went on to become celebrated and sought after as the art world's architect of choice, designing spaces for artists Elizabeth Murray, Jennifer Bartlett, Richard Serra and Joel Shapiro, and gallerists Paula Cooper, Brooke Alexander, Maeght-Lelong and Lorence-Monk in New York and Anthony d'Offay and Annely Juda in London. This first monograph offers a detailed overview of Gordon's projects for the art world, from the 100,000-square-foot exhibition space he designed for the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid to the SoHo home he remodeled for Richard Serra, demonstrating throughout his elegant use of light, space and minimal decoration, and displaying his gift for always highlighting the art.

Read more less

The Acheson Inquiry was the most important government-backed examination into inequalities in health in the past 20 years. However, much of the detailed evidence presented to the Inquiry has not been published - until now. This book presents 17 chapters of evidence commissioned by the Acheson Inquiry to inform their work. It provides a 'state of the art' review, by leading experts, into aspects of inequalities in health among: Mothers/families/children Youth Adults of working age Older people Housing Social environment Poverty and income The NHS Nutrition Education Areas Ethnicity Transport/pollution/material environment Gender Mental health Health-related behaviours Oral health · Inequalities in health: The evidence is important reading for academics in the social and medical sciences, students, medical professionals and people working within the fields of health and community care. Studies in poverty, inequality and social exclusion series Series Editor: David Gordon, Director, Townsend Centre for International Poverty Research. Poverty, inequality and social exclusion remain the most fundamental problems that humanity faces in the 21st century. This exciting series, published in association with the Townsend Centre for International Poverty Research at the University of Bristol, aims to make cutting-edge poverty related research more widely available. For other titles in this series, please follow the series link from the main catalogue page.

Read more less

Peter Townsend, who sadly passed away in June 2009, had a long career researching an exceptional range of topics within the social sciences and campaigning against social inequalities. This reader brings together for the first time a collection of his most distinctive work, allowing readers to review changes and continuities over the past six decades, and reflect on social issues that have returned to the fore today. A particular feature of the volume is in tracing the links between empirical evidence and both social theory and social policy, and how those disciplines intersect. This reader will provide a teaching and learning resource for students in different disciplines of the social sciences and will also provide an insight into the development of one scientist's entire intellectual approach. We hope it will be a fitting memorial to his life and work.

Read more less

Social exclusion is a key problem for policy makers, researchers and professionals worldwide. Despite this, the debate lacks a dominant disciplinary focus. This innovative handbook covers evidence from key research and policy to offer cross-disciplinary perspectives on major areas of social exclusion. Focusing on central policy domains including education, healthcare and crime, it is structured so as to relate evidence to the state of social exclusion and the mechanisms by which it can be tackled. It book will be an unrivalled reference for academics and practitioners working across disciplines including housing, education, psychology, political science, healthcare, sociology and law.

Read more less

There's a party at Pete's, and Jack and Gabriella are invited! How will they get there? They'll follow the signs, straight to Pete's party!

Read more less

Relentlessly, the wide health gap between different groups of people living in Britain continues to get even wider. This book presents new evidence (which was not available to the government's Independent Inquiry into Inequalities in Health) on the size of the gap, and the extent to which the gap is widening. In particular, new geographical data are presented and displayed in striking graphical form. It challenges whether the government is concerned enough about reducing inequalities and highlights the living conditions of the million people living in the least healthy areas in Britain. It presents explanations for the widening health gap, and addresses the implications of this major social problem. In the light of this evidence the authors put forward social policies which will reduce the health gap in the future. The widening gap synthesises all the information available to date and should be read alongside the report of the evidence presented to the Independent Inquiry into Inequalities in Health (Inequalities in health, The Policy Press, 1999) and by all those concerned with reducing health inequalities. Studies in poverty, inequality and social exclusion series Series Editor: David Gordon, Director, Townsend Centre for International Poverty Research. Poverty, inequality and social exclusion remain the most fundamental problems that humanity faces in the 21st century. This exciting series, published in association with the Townsend Centre for International Poverty Research at the University of Bristol, aims to make cutting-edge poverty related research more widely available. For other titles in this series, please follow the series link from the main catalogue page.

Read more less

A brilliant cross-cultural interpretation of a key text of yoga philosophy The Yoga Sutras of Patañjali is the foundational text of yoga philosophy, used by millions of yoga practitioners and students worldwide. Written in a question-and-answer format, The Yoga Sutras of Patañjali deals with the theory and practice of yoga and the psychological question of the liberation of the soul from attachments. This book is a new rendering into English of the Arabic translation and commentary of this text by the brilliant eleventh-century polymath al-Bīrūnī. Given the many historical variants of the Yoga Sutras, his Kitāb Bātanjali is important for yoga studies as the earliest translation of the Sanskrit. It is also of unique value as an Arabic text within Islamic studies, given the intellectual and philosophical challenges that faced the medieval Muslim reader when presented with the intricacy of composition, interpretation, and allusion that permeates this translation. An English-only edition.

Read more less

A brilliant cross-cultural interpretation of a key text of yoga philosophy The Yoga Sutras of Patañjali is the foundational text of yoga philosophy, used by millions of yoga practitioners and students worldwide. Written in a question-and-answer format, The Yoga Sutras of Patañjali deals with the theory and practice of yoga and the psychological question of the liberation of the soul from attachments. This book is a new rendering into English of the Arabic translation and commentary of this text by the brilliant eleventh-century polymath al-Bīrūnī. Given the many historical variants of the Yoga Sutras, his Kitāb Bātanjali is important for yoga studies as the earliest translation of the Sanskrit. It is also of unique value as an Arabic text within Islamic studies, given the intellectual and philosophical challenges that faced the medieval Muslim reader when presented with the intricacy of composition, interpretation, and allusion that permeates this translation. An English-only edition.

Read more less

In the autumn of 1942, British Special Operations Executive agent Ronald Sydney Seth was parachuted into German occupied Estonia, supposedly to carry out acts of sabotage against the Nazis in a plan code-named Operation Blunderhead. Uniquely, it was Seth and not the SOE who had engineered the mission, and he had no support network on the ground. It was a failure. Captured by Estonian militia, Seth was handed over to the Germans for interrogation, imprisoned and sentenced to death, but managed to evade execution by convincing his captors that he could be an asset. What happened between Seth’s capture and his return to England in the dying days of the war reads, at times, like a novel – inhabiting a Gestapo safe house, acting as a stool pigeon, entrusted with a mission sanctioned by Heinrich Himmler – yet much of it is true, albeit highly embellished by Seth, who was quite capable of weaving the most elaborate fantasies. He was an unlikely hero, whose survival owed more to his ability to spin a tale than to any daring qualities. Operation Blunderhead is a compelling and original account of an extraordinary episode of the Second World War – a brilliant blend of fact and fiction, contrasting material taken from SOE and MI5 files with Seth’s own fantastical story.

Read more less

This classic and now increasingly important book is an exception in the literature on terrorism. Based on complex observations of actual movement participants, Wieviorka's book addresses a broad spectrum of terrorist activity - from Italian left-wing terrorists to Basque nationalist groups to the international terrorism of the Middle East. The result is an incisive analysis of what terrorists believe and what they hope to achieve through their actions. For this new edition, Wieviorka adds new material that remaps the state of terrorism after the events of 2001.

Read more less

This work attempts to see the satis - the Hindu custom of women sacrificing themselves on the funeral pyres of their husbands - through Hindu eyes, providing an experiential and psychoanalytic account of ritual self-sacrifice and self-mutilation in South Asia. Based on 15 years of fieldwork in northern India, where the state-banned practice of satis re-emerged in the 1970s, as well as textual analysis, Catherine Weinberger-Thomas constructs a radically new interpretation of satis. She shows that their self-immolation transcends gender, caste and class, region and history, representing for the Hindus a path to immortality.

Read more less