This collection of stories operates on the principle that it is sometimes easier to show than it is to tell. This book of stories and meditations from sources that extend back to the origins of Zen Buddhism offer what amounts to a total historic portrait of the essence of Zen. Alternately amusing, inspiring, and baffling, the stories hint at the total picture of Zen's beauty, poetry, and essential paradoxes. Students of Buddhism as well as the philosophically curious have used this book to understand Zen.

This collection of stories operates on the principle that it is sometimes easier to show than it is to tell. These stories and meditations come from sources that extend back to the origins of Zen Buddhism and offer what amounts to a complete portrait of the essence of Zen. Alternately amusing, inspiring, and baffling, the stories hint at the totality Zen's beauty, poetry, and essential paradoxes. Students of Buddhism as well as the philosophically curious have used this book to understand Zen.

Robert Pirsig's journey to enlightenment on the back of a motorcycle was rejected 121 times before its publication in 1974. ZEN AND THE ART OF MOTORCYCLE MAINTENANCE immediately hit the best-seller lists, and, even decades later, it remains a cult classic. A combination of travelogue, philosophical tract, gripping novel, and probing memoir, ZEN encompasses both Eastern and Western thought in an exploration of the concept of "Quality"--what it means and how to achieve it. Pirsig's method involves an examination of self: who are we, how did we get where we are, and what is worth striving for? In a readable, often enchanting narrative, he attempts to answer these questions, first for himself, as he travels back into his life and scrutinizes his own experiences, and then for the reader, who is on his or her own quest for meaning. Pirsig's book, both intimately personal and powerfully universal, is in the end a book about how to live. But seen solely as the chronicle of a cross-country trip, ZEN is equally appealing. As the narrator and his 11-year-old son, Chris, travel the roads in all moods and all weathers, he describes, with humor and warmth, his interactions with Chris, and the boy's responses to everything from firecrackers to the sound of rain on a tent roof to a massive bull moose in Montana--and a deep and solid father-son relationship begins to emerge. In a heartbreaking Afterword written in 1984, Pirsig describes Chris's murder in San Francisco, in 1979, at the age of 22, and the decision he and his wife made to have another child--a little girl named Nell. After his initial grief, Pirsig refuses to sink into mourning for his son," and writes, "Chris's body was gone. But the larger pattern remained."

In this classic road memoir, Robert Pirsig turns a cross-country motorcycle trip into a journey to enlightenment and self-discovery.

In this classic road memoir, Robert Pirsig turns a cross-country motorcycle trip into a journey to enlightenment and self-discovery.

Brad Meltzer, author of THE MILLIONAIRES and THE FIRST COUNSEL, returns to Washington, DC, with THE ZERO GAME. Capitol Hill aides and best friends Matthew Mercer and Harris Sandler join the underground Game--in which bets are placed by political powers-that-be and the outcomes are determined by congressional votes. Matt and Harris try to make a financial killing using insider information, but their gamble suddenly turns deadly, and they find themselves running from a hired assassin. The chase leads them to South Dakota and an abandoned gold mine, as they flee the killer while trying to uncover the secret political agenda behind the Zero Game.