David Romtvedt's No Way: An American ""Tao Te Ching"" explores the art of living in the fast-paced, dangerous, unpredictable contemporary world. Lucid and wise in the spirit of its ancient Chinese predecessor, No Way functions as a kind of offbeat-yet-deadly-serious manual on the conduct of life. This slightly tongue-in-cheek take on the Tao's advice acknowledges that nobody likes being told how to live, least of all the author himself. With an openness to complexity and mystery, in tones that range from cool to passionate, No Way brings the Tao into the social turmoil of a twenty-first-century United States beset by political strife, mass shootings, and financial greed. Romtvedt combats cynicism and malaise with wry verse that positions itself in the role of the trickster. The voice of these poems can be serious and contradictory yet also humorous and welcoming. By suggesting that the days of the ancient Tao are gone for good, No Way offers readers an invitation to guide themselves forward, free of sages and rulers.

Eastern Approaches to Western Film: Asian Aesthetics and Reception in Cinema offers a renewed critical outlook on Western classic film directly from the pantheon of European and American masters, including Alfred Hitchcock, George Lucas, Robert Bresson, Carl Dreyer, Jean-Pierre Melville, John Ford, Leo McCarey, Sam Peckinpah, and Orson Welles. The book contributes an "Eastern Approach" into the critical studies of Western films by reappraising selected films of these masters, matching and comparing their visions, themes, and ideas with the philosophical and paradigmatic principles of the East. It traces Eastern inscriptions and signs embedded within these films as well as their social lifestyle values and other concepts that are also inherently Eastern. As such, the book represents an effort to reformulate established discourses on Western cinema that are overwhelmingly Eurocentric. Although it seeks to inject an alternative perspective, the ultimate aim is to reach a balance of East and West. By focusing on Eastern aesthetic and philosophical influences in Western films, the book suggests that there is a much more thorough integration of East and West than previously thought or imagined.

Equanimity, good health, peace of mind, and long life are the goals of the ancient Taoist tradition known as "internal alchemy," of which "Cultivating Stillness " is a key text. Written between the second and fifth centuries, the book is attributed to T'ai Shang Lao-chun--the legendary figure more widely known as Lao-Tzu, author of the "Tao-te Ching ." The accompanying commentary, written in the nineteenth century by Shui-ch'ing Tzu, explains the alchemical symbolism of the text and the methods for cultivating internal stillness of body and mind. A principal part of the Taoist canon for many centuries, "Cultivating Stillness " is still the first book studied by Taoist initiates today.

Ancestral ritual in early China was an orchestrated dance between what was present (the offerings and the living) and what was absent (the ancestors). The interconnections among the tangible elements of the sacrifice were overt and almost mechanical, but extending those connections to the invisible guests required a medium that was itself invisible. Thus in early China, ancestral sacrifice was associated with focused thinking about the ancestors, with a structured mental effort by the living to reach out to the absent forebears and to give them shape and existence. Thinking about the ancestors-about those who had become distant-required active deliberation and meditation, qualities that had to be nurtured and learned. This study is a history of the early Chinese ancestral cult, particularly its cognitive aspects. Its goals are to excavate the cult's color and vitality and to quell assumptions that it was no more than a simplistic and uninspired exchange of food for longevity, of prayers for prosperity. Ancestor worship was not, the author contends, merely mechanical and thoughtless. Rather, it was an idea system that aroused serious debates about the nature of postmortem existence, served as the religious backbone to Confucianism, and may even have been the forerunner of Daoist and Buddhist meditation practices.

Kumazawa Banzan's (1619-1691) Responding to the Great Learning (Daigaku wakumon) stands as the first major writing on political economy in early modern Japanese history. John A. Tucker's translation is the first English rendition of this controversial text to be published in eighty years. The introduction offers an accessible and incisive commentary, including detailed analyses of Banzan's text within the context of his life, as well as broader historical and intellectual developments in East Asian Confucian thought. Emphasizing parallels between Banzan's life events, such as his relief efforts in the Okayama domain following devastating flooding, and his later writings advocating compassionate government, environmental initiatives, and projects for growing wealth, Tucker sheds light on Banzan's main objective of 'governing the realm and bringing peace and prosperity to all below heaven'. In Responding to the Great Learning, Banzan was doing more than writing a philosophical commentary, he was advising the Tokugawa shogunate to undertake a major reorganization of the polity - or face the consequences.