The following are books that received favorable reviews in Parabola. If you would like to order any of these works, please click on the title of the book.

In the field of Library Science, there is a distinction made between reference tools and ready-reference tools. The reference department of a library is filled with reference tools of all kinds. But ready-reference tools are the ones that are shelved closest to the librarians’ desks, due to their frequency of use. The Kabbalah Handbook: A Concise Encyclopedia of Terms and Concepts in Jewish Mysticism is already on my home ready-reference shelf. Not only will I refer to it time and again when I am confident it will answer a question I have, but I will also reach for it often, simply to glance through it, purely for the joy and delight of it, jumping back and forth, here and there, savoring every page, learning things I want to know, just as I did with the World Almanac when I was nine years old.

—Arthur Kurzweil

DIVINE DYADS: Ancient Civilization in Tibet
By John Vincent Bellezza. Paljor Publications (www.paljorpublications.com), 2002 paper

SPIRIT-MEDIUMS, SACRED MOUNTAINS AND RELATED BON TEXTUAL TRADITIONS IN UPPER TIBET: Calling Down the Gods
By John Vincent Bellezza. Brill's Tibetan Studies Library (www.brill.nl), 2005. PP. 568 + xvi

ANTIQUITIES OF NORTHERN TIBET: Pre-Buddhist Archaeological Discoveries on the High Plateau
By John Vincent Bellezza. Adroit Publishers (Delhi, India), 2001

ANTIQUITIES OF UPPER TIBET: An Inventory of Pre-Buddhist Archaeological Sites on the High Plateau. Findings of the Upper Tibet Circumnavigation Expedition, 2000
By John Vincent Bellezza. Adroit Publishers (Delhi, India), 2001

The research for his books took Bellezza on many treks across parts of Tibet that are over 12,000 and 14,000 feet. For many years he spent half the year in Tibet exploring archaeological remains and the other half in Dharamsala, where he studied at the Tibetan Archives to sharpen his language skills so he could conduct interviews and read the texts associated with the various deities he was studying. On some of his journeys he made pilgrimages circumambulating the sacred lakes and mountains on foot. He would survey ancient ruins, taking photographs and interviewing local nomads and villagers along with any Bon or Buddhist lamas who resided in the area.

—J. M. White

BLUE-EYED DEVIL: A Road Odyssey through Islamic America

Knight, a young Muslim punk rocker/provocateur/professional wrestling fan, set out in 2003 on a 20,000-mile, sixty-day journey around the United States in search of answers to the mysteries of W. D. Fard—mythic/mystic father of Black American Islam—by default an Islam indigenous to North America. As such, this book, his travelogue of his journey, differs from every other book on Islam published since September 11, refusing to be another “Why can’t we all just get along” apologetic. On the contrary, Blue-Eyed Devil, for the first time, makes room for American Islam as it exists on city street corners, in abandoned mosques, on remote islands off North America’s East Coast, in quiet graveyards, among Sufi heretics, outside punk rock shows, and in the hearts and minds of liberal and conservative Muslims on college campuses throughout the U.S.

WHEN WALLS BECOME DOORWAYS: Creativity and the Transforming Illness

In her eloquent book on artistic creativity and illness, When Walls Become Doorways, Dr. Zausner, a painter and art psychologist, offers an appreciation of the artist’s own situation: the creator’s message is informed by his own trials and afflictions. Zausner notes her personal experience with ovarian cancer in 1989. Her medical prognosis was doubtful, but as many seeming misfortunes are, the cancer proved to be a transforming passage to a higher creative expression and refinement of her soul.

—Henry H. Sturtevant