This study provides a fresh look at the debate between science and religion that documents how the experiences produced by spiritual practice are surprisingly consistent with the findings of modern biology, despite the difficulty in reconciling scientific theories and religious dogma. This book is unique in its focus on bodily experience as an independent source of knowledge and insight, an important aspect of recent discoveries in neurology and psychology. By rethinking what it is to be human and what role self-consciousness plays, it finds striking points of intersection between science and religion and challenges readers to rediscover their spiritual connections to the physical world. Combining scientific rigor with the spiritual quest, A New Biology of Religion: Spiritual Practice and the Life of the Body reframes the science-religion debate. This profound work examines how all things are connected-both scientifically and spiritually-and shows how religious practices mirror the biological processes of life.

Magic and Galaxy Magic and Galaxy is the story of how two seemingly unrelated worlds, that of magicians and that of scientists, become entangled in the ultimate battle for supremacy and a way of life. In this three book volume, the first two books -Three Magicians and Eyes of the Stars - develop entirely different plotlines. In the third book, The Orb, the characters come together as one, in pursuit of a common goal. Three Magicians: In the peaceful Kingdom of Rozenweg, a powerful empire is crumbling from within. Outside of her borders, the most treacherous magic known to the world is being born. The fate of the kingdom, and the entire world of Thoraya, will fall upon the most unlikely of heroes, the three magicians Kudad, Relik, and Turri. The men will become united in a quest that will test the limits of camaraderie, love, and betrayal. Eyes Of The Stars: In the year 2175, the Milky Way is at a crossroads. On planet Earth, a global government has been established, and the world's first hyperspacial craft has been sent into space, navigated by the humble inventor Marl Bercum and his wife, Onita. Little do the Bercums know that elsewhere in the galaxy, three advanced civilizations are on the verge of total war, and planet Earth is destined to become the center of a great struggle for power. The Orb: One tiny object contains all the power of the galaxy, but only a few magicians even know of its existence. As the planet Earth totters toward the brink of civil war, a struggle rages for the soul of Thoraya-a struggle for control of the magic orb, sending the entire galaxy in search of its powers.

In this elegant and personal new work, Michael P. Steinberg reflects on the story of Moses and the Exodus as a foundational myth of politics-of the formation not of a nation but of a political community grounded in universal law. Modern renderings of the story of Moses, from Michelangelo to Spinoza to Freud to Schoenberg to Derrida, have seized on the story's ambivalences, its critical and self-critical power. These literal returns form the first level of the afterlife of Moses. They spin a persistent critical and self-critical thread of European and transatlantic art and argument. And they enable the second strand of Steinberg's argument, namely the depersonalization of the Moses and Exodus story, its evolving abstraction and modulation into a varied modern history of political beginnings. Beginnings, as distinct from origins, are human and historical, writes Steinberg. Political constitutions, as a form of beginning, imply the eventuality of their own renewals and their own reconstitutions. Motivated in part by recent reactionary insurgencies in the US, Europe, and Israel, this astute work of intellectual history posits the critique of myths of origin as a key principle of democratic government, affect, and citizenship, of their endurance as well as their fragility.

In this elegant and personal new work, Michael P. Steinberg reflects on the story of Moses and the Exodus as a foundational myth of politics—of the formation not of a nation but of a political community grounded in universal law. Modern renderings of the story of Moses, from Michelangelo to Spinoza to Freud to Schoenberg to Derrida, have seized on the story's ambivalences, its critical and self-critical power. These literal returns form the first level of the afterlife of Moses. They spin a persistent critical and self-critical thread of European and transatlantic art and argument. And they enable the second strand of Steinberg's argument, namely the depersonalization of the Moses and Exodus story, its evolving abstraction and modulation into a varied modern history of political beginnings. Beginnings, as distinct from origins, are human and historical, writes Steinberg. Political constitutions, as a form of beginning, imply the eventuality of their own renewals and their own reconstitutions. Motivated in part by recent reactionary insurgencies in the US, Europe, and Israel, this astute work of intellectual history posits the critique of myths of origin as a key principle of democratic government, affect, and citizenship, of their endurance as well as their fragility.

"The Fourth Genre" offers the most comprehensive, teachable, and current introduction available today to the cutting-edge, evolving genre of creative nonfiction. While acknowledging the literary impulse of nonfiction to be a fourth genre equivalent to poetry, fiction, and drama, this text focuses on subgenres of the nonfiction form, including memoir, nature writing, personal essays, literary journalism, cultural criticism, and travel writing. This anthology was the first to draw on the common ground of the practicing writer and the practical scholar and to make the pedagogical connections between creative writing practice and composition theory, bridging some of the gaps between the teaching of composition, creative writing, and literature in English departments.

Today s dynamic wine culture calls for a different kind of wine book. The Wine Savant is just that: punchy, polemical, and brimming with insights to educate and entertain beginning wine drinkers and seasoned oenophiles alike.

Never has the wine world had so much to offer, and never have smart decisions about value, quality, grape, and season been so difficult to make. In The Wine Savant, Michael Steinberger tramps through the world of contemporary wine from three-buck Chuck and bucket-list Bordeaux to bottle speculators and biodynamic wineries to give the inside scoop on the key concerns facing the new generation of wine lovers:

Why is California suddenly cool again? What s really the difference between a 95-point wine and a 94-point wine? Why is Burgundy ascendant and Bordeaux suddenly so passe? What s a biodynamic wine, what s a natural wine, and should you care? Do food and wine pairings still matter?

Featuring expert buying guides including the New Kings of California and the World s Great $25-and-Under Bottles and tips on tough-to-pair cuisines like Indian and Japanese, The Wine Savant is the perfect guide to today s often-bewildering realm of choice: ferociously opinionated and committed body and soul to enjoying every glass."

The power of music, the way it works on the mind and heart, remains an enticing mystery. Now two noted writers on classical music, Michael Steinberg and Larry Rothe, explore the allure of this melodious art--not in the clinical terms of social scientists--but through stories drawn from their own experience. In For the Love of Music, Steinberg and Rothe draw on a lifetime of listening to, living with, and writing about music, sharing the delights and revelatory encounters they have had with Mozart, Brahms, Stravinsky, and a host of other great (and almost-great) composers. At once highly personal and immediately accessible, their writings shed light on those who make music and those who listen to it--drawing readers into the beautiful and dangerous terrain that has meant so much to the authors. In recounting how they themselves came to love music, Steinberg and Rothe offer keys for listening. You will meet the man who created the sound of Hollywood's Golden Age and you will learn how composers have addressed issues as contemporary as AIDS and the terrorist attacks of September 11.

A companion to his The Symphony: A Listener's Guide , Steinberg's new book covers the orchestral concerto repertoire from Bach to the present and featuring all instruments.

In the culture of the modern West, we see ourselves as thinking subjects, defined by our conscious thought, autonomous and separate from each other and the world we survey. Current research in neurology and cognitive science shows that this picture is false. We think with our bodies, and in interaction with others, and our thought is never completed. The Fiction of a Thinkable World is a wide-ranging exploration of the meaning of this insight for our understanding of history, ethics, and politics

Ambitious but never overwhelming, carrying its immense learning lightly, The Fiction of a Thinkable World shows how the Western conception of the human subject came to be formed historically, how it contrasts with that of Eastern thought, and how it provides the basic justification for the institutions of liberal capitalism. The fiction of a world separated from each of us as we are separated from each other, from which we make our choices in solitary thought, is enacted by the voter in the voting booth and the consumer at the supermarket shelf. The structure of daily experience in capitalist society reinforces the fictions of the Western intellectual tradition, stunt human creativity, and create the illusion that the capitalist order is natural and unsurpassable.

Steinberg's critique of the intellectual world of Western capitalism at the same time illuminates the paths that have been closed off in that world. It draws on Chinese ethics to show how our actions can be brought in accord with the world as it is, in its ever-changing interaction and mutual transformation, and sketches a radical political perspective that sheds the illusions of the Western model. Beautifully conceived and written, The Fiction of a Thinkable World provides new ways of thinking and opens new horizons.

A companion to his The Symphony: A Listener's Guide , Steinberg's new book covers the orchestral concerto repertoire from Bach to the present and featuring all instruments.

In The Symphony, renowned critic Michael Steinberg offers music lovers a monumental guide to this most celebrated of musical forms, with perceptive commentaries on some 118 works by 36 major composers.

This book is unique in its focus on bodily experience as an independent source of knowledge and insight, an important aspect of recent discoveries in neurology and psychology. By rethinking what it is to be human and what role self-consciousness plays, it finds striking points of intersection between science and religion and challenges readers to rediscover their spiritual connections to the physical world. Combining scientific rigor with the spiritual quest, "A New Biology of Religion: Spiritual Practice and the Life of the Body" reframes the science-religion debate. This profound work examines how all things are connected-both scientifically and spiritually-and shows how religious practices mirror the biological processes of life.

The land of temples is South India, the southern tip of the Indian subcontinent. It's been called the last surviving classical civilization, a land where there is room for temples large and small and time for rituals passed down for millennia. In four brief essays and two dozen evocative black-and-white photographs scholar and devotee Michael Steinberg takes readers into the inner sanctuaries of ancient temples and out again into the teeming streets of contemporary Chennai. A big book in a little package, his deeply personal story also sheds light on the enduring importance of a way of life that has its roots in the dawn of civilization itself.

Magic and Galaxy Magic and Galaxy is the story of how two seemingly unrelated worlds, that of magicians and that of scientists, become entangled in the ultimate battle for supremacy and a way of life. In this three book volume, the first two books -Three Magicians and Eyes of the Stars - develop entirely different plotlines. In the third book, The Orb, the characters come together as one, in pursuit of a common goal. Three Magicians: In the peaceful Kingdom of Rozenweg, a powerful empire is crumbling from within. Outside of her borders, the most treacherous magic known to the world is being born. The fate of the kingdom, and the entire world of Thoraya, will fall upon the most unlikely of heroes, the three magicians Kudad, Relik, and Turri. The men will become united in a quest that will test the limits of camaraderie, love, and betrayal. Eyes Of The Stars: In the year 2175, the Milky Way is at a crossroads. On planet Earth, a global government has been established, and the world's first hyperspacial craft has been sent into space, navigated by the humble inventor Marl Bercum and his wife, Onita. Little do the Bercums know that elsewhere in the galaxy, three advanced civilizations are on the verge of total war, and planet Earth is destined to become the center of a great struggle for power. The Orb: One tiny object contains all the power of the galaxy, but only a few magicians even know of its existence. As the planet Earth totters toward the brink of civil war, a struggle rages for the soul of Thoraya-a struggle for control of the magic orb, sending the entire galaxy in search of its powers.

Michael Steinberg's highly successful listener's guides--The Symphony and The Concerto--have been universally praised for their blend of captivating biography, crystal clear musical analysis, and delightful humor. Now Steinberg follows these two greatly admired volumes with Choral Masterworks, the only such guide available to this most popular of musical forms.
Here are more than fifty illuminating essays on the classic choral masterworks, ranging from Handel's Messiah, Bach's Mass in B Minor, and Beethoven's Missa solemnis, to works by Haydn, Brahms, Mendelssohn, and many others. Steinberg spans the entire history of classical music, from such giants of the Romantic era as Verdi and Berlioz, to leading modern composers such as Elgar, Rachmaninoff, Vaughan Williams, and Stravinsky, to contemporary masters such as John Adams and Charles Wuorinen. For each piece, Steinberg includes a fascinating biographical account of the work's genesis, often spiced with wonderful asides. The author includes an astute musical analysis of each piece, one that casual music lovers can easily appreciate and that more serious fans will find invaluable. The book also provides basic information such as the various movements of the work, the organization of the chorus and orchestra, and brief historical notes on early performances.
More than twenty million Americans perform regularly in choirs or choruses. Choral Masterworks will appeal not only to concert goers and CD collectors, but also to this vast multitude of choral performers, an especially engaged and active community.
"What sets Steinberg's writing apart is its appealing mixture of impregnable authority (he knows this music) and purelypersonal asides (by the end of the book, we know this man). Choral Masterworks can be read by anybody, from a professional musician to any young listener newly braced by the stoic pessimism of the Brahms 'German Requiem.'" --Washington Post Book World

In the culture of the modern West, we see ourselves as thinking subjects, defined by our conscious thought, autonomous and separate from each other and the world we survey. Current research in neurology and cognitive science shows that this picture is false. We think with our bodies, and in interaction with others, and our thought is never completed. The Fiction of a Thinkable World is a wide-ranging exploration of the meaning of this insight for our understanding of history, ethics, and politics.

Ambitious but never overwhelming, carrying its immense learning lightly, The Fiction of a Thinkable World shows how the Western conception of the human subject came to be formed historically, how it contrasts with that of Eastern thought, and how it provides the basic justification for the institutions of liberal capitalism. The fiction of a world separated from each of us as we are separated from each other, from which we make our choices in solitary thought, is enacted by the voter in the voting booth and the consumer at the supermarket shelf. The structure of daily experience in capitalist society reinforces the fictions of the Western intellectual tradition, stunt human creativity, and create the illusion that the capitalist order is natural and unsurpassable.

Steinberg's critique of the intellectual world of Western capitalism at the same time illuminates the paths that have been closed off in that world. It draws on Chinese ethics to show how our actions can be brought in accord with the world as it is, in its ever-changing interaction and mutual transformation, and sketches a radical political perspective that sheds the illusions of the Western model. Beautifully conceived andwritten, The Fiction of a Thinkable World provides new ways of thinking and opens new horizons.