Look to Books for the Holiday Season

Let’s face it…this is a tough holiday season. The Dow might as well become a new Six Flags roller coaster, and it seems like every other week a bank or corporation that was “too big to fail” does just that. Meanwhile, there’s still people you love and presents to buy. So what’s the solution? Buy a book!

Books make great gifts, plain and simple. Yes, iPhones are sleek and HDTVs look (almost) like real life, but can you beat possibly changing someone’s life for $15.95? Books are powerful—they transport, calm, inform, and inspire.

And don’t just take my word for it—America’s book publishers have created a new website and video with reasons why books make great gifts and links to 2008 book gift guides. They even managed to get John Stewart and Bill O’Reilly to agree on something…

To Damanhur and Back

Let’s just say that this isn’t your standard hippie commune.

Founded in 1975 in the mountains of northern Italy, Damanhur is a flourishing center for spiritual, artistic, and social research. It is also an eco-society that practices sustainable agriculture and a federation with its own currency and social institutions. But if you’ve heard of Damanhur at all, you probably know it by its nine Temples of Humankind. These massive, elaborately decorated subterranean temples have been described as a wonder of the modern world.

And here’s the best part: after many years of being (in more ways than one) an underground organization, Damanhur now welcomes tourists who are intrigued by its culture, philosophy, and community.

This is where North Atlantic’s latest, The Traveler’s Guide to Damanhur: The Amazing Northern Italian Eco-Society, comes in. Like a Baedeker, this helpful guide covers travel essentials like dining, lodging, festivals, shopping, and interesting things to do—which, in Damanhur, can be a little unusual. You can meditate in the Temples of Humankind, attend workshops on esoteric physics, and partake of Damanhurian energy healing and rejuvenation. Written by Damanhurians Esperide Ananas and Stambecco Pesco, this travel guide—unlike a Baedeker—also includes interviews, full color photos, and even a comic book dramatization of Damanhur’s history.

North Atlantic’s own founder Richard Grossinger visited in 2006. In his travelogue, which is included in the book, he writes,

Damanhur cannot be foreseen. Inside the hill is an architecture and series of rooms that defies description. Imagine New York City’s entire Metropolitan Museum of Art taken apart and then reassembled in underground chambers leading up through a mountain…The temples at Damanhur are a living organism that is so massive on an astral plane that it dwarfs the Metropolitan or any other terrestrial museum…Damanhur is a gallery meant for visitors five hundred thousand years in the future or from other solar systems and time-space continua.

Needless to say, The Traveler’s Guide to Damanhur is no substitute for an actual visit to Damanhur, but it will help you make the most of planning and enjoying one.

CLICK HERE to learn more about The Traveler’s Guide to Damanhur.

CLICK HERE to visit the Damanhur web site.

CLICK HERE to see the Temples of Humankind.

Cecil Brown Wins 2008 PEN Oakland Josephine Miles National Literary Award

On Saturday, December 6th Cecil Brown will be awarded a 2008 PEN Oakland Josephine Miles National Literary Award for Dude, Where’s my Black Studies Department? The Disappearance of Black Americans from U.S. Universities. The Awards Ceremony and Reception is free to the public and will take place from 2pm to 5pm at the Rockridge Branch of Oakland Public Library, 5366 College Avenue. For more information, please call 510-681-5652 or visit www.penoakland.org.

PEN Oakland, A Bay Area Chapter of the International Organization of Poets, Essayists, and Novelists, was founded in 1989 to address multicultural issues, and educate the public as to the nature of multicultural work. These award-winning authors address the diversity and uniqueness of American culture, and represent the new voices of American literature. The late Josephine Miles, in whose honor the awards are presented, was a highly regarded poet, critic, and professor of English at the University of California in Berkeley.

Cecil Brown holds a PhD in African-American Literature, Folklore, and Theory of Narrative from the University of California, Berkeley. He has published a number of novels, short stories, screenplays, and journal articles relating to African-American literature and life, and has taught classes in literature and popular culture at UC Berkeley, the University of San Francisco, and other universities throughout California.

“One of the most significant contributions of Dude, Where’s My Black Studies Department? is what Brown teaches us about the African-American oral tradition, namely, about how its ‘difference’ from white American culture poses a constant challenge, and threat, to the ideal of integration in the classroom and on campus.”
—Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Alphonse Fletcher University Professor at Harvard University, editor-in-chief at the Oxford African American Studies Center

“Cecil Brown is one of the most gifted writers and brilliant intellectuals of his generation. His provocative analyses of contemporary black and American culture brims with insight. Unafraid to be controversial or to go against the grain, Brown never fails to make us think.”
—Michael Eric Dyson, Avalon Foundation Professor in the Humanities at the University of Pennsylvania, and author of Debating Race

“Some of the severest criticisms of African-American culture are being issued on op-ed pages and in books written by Caribbean-Americans. Are some Caribbean-Americans being used as pawns in an attack on African-Americans? Have some of them been awarded honorary “white” status as a reward? How does this conflict play out in academia? Writer Cecil Brown is one of the few African-American public intellectuals with the nerve to tackle this subject and he does so with his usual wit, savvy, and brilliance.”
—Ishmael Reed, author of Mumbo Jumbo and Airing Dirty Laundry

CLICK HERE to learn more about the 2008 Josephine Miles National Literary Awards.

CLICK HERE to learn more about PEN Oakland.

CLICK HERE to learn more about Dude, Where’s My Black Studies Department?

CLICK HERE to visit Cecil Brown’s web site.