The HBO miniseries John Adams set records on Sunday night when it won 13 Emmys, the most ever by a miniseries. Stars Paul Giamatti and Laura Linney won for best actor and best actress, among other awards.

Get the unHollywoodized story of the American Founding Father and the new nation’s second president in the two-volume biography John Adams, written by his son, John Quincy Adams. One of the most complete biographies ever written about an American president, this is a remarkable effort examining the life and career of the great Revolutionary leader.

Volume 1 covers Adams’s school days as well as his study and practice of law in pre-Revolutionary America. The Boston Massacre is discussed in great depth, along with Adams’s entrance into public life and his landmark term in the Congress of 1774 straight through to the advent of the Declaration of Independence.

Volume 2 covers Adams’s role in the negotiation and signing of the Treaty of Peace with Great Britain as well as his central task in the organization of the government of the newly emerging nation. Also included are Adams’s recollections of his election and service as first vice president to George Washington’s administration and those of his term as second president of the United States.

John Adams is available at Amazon.com and from other online booksellers.

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Today, November 13, is World Kindness Day. If you’re looking for new perspectives on the spiritual rejuvenation to be found in helping others, check out the Cosimo book The Power of Purpose Awards, a project of the John Templeton Foundation. In this collection of award-winning essays, you will share an umbrella with a monk, root for a prisoner serving a life sentence for murder, cheer on the efforts of an elderly woman struggling to learn to read and write, scrub down a bathroom for “colored” in the 1950s segregated South, and play a memory/listening game with the elderly. And much more. The essays explore the many ways we can find purpose when helping other people on a personal level, nurturing the environment, or when working with others toward a larger goal. While their subjects are diverse, their message is simple: finding one’s purpose is finding one’s meaning, one’s “divine spark.” In helping others, we help ourselves.

Proceeds from The Power of Purpose Awards benefit The Hunger Project, a global, strategic organization committed to the sustainable end of world hunger. The Hunger Project has mobilized clusters of rural villages around the planet to create and run their own programs that achieve lasting progress in health, education, nutrition and family income.

Looking for more ways to be kind? Search for charities — and everything else — at Good Search, a search engine that donates 50-percent of its revenue to the charities, and schools designated by its users.

The Power of Purpose Awards is available at Amazon and other online booksellers.

(Technorati tags: Power of Purpose Awards, Hunger Project, Good Search, World Kindness Day)

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If you’ve already finished Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and are desperately seeking a new magic fix, why not read up on the historical roots of the mythology of magic?

Start with Aradia: Gospel of the Witches, by Charles Godfrey Leland, the 1899 classic that has become a foundational document of modern Wicca and neopaganism. Leland, an American journalist, claimed that a “witch informant,” a fortune-teller named Maddalena, supplied him with the secret writings that he translated and combined with his research on Italian pagan tradition to create a gospel of pagan belief and practice. Here, in the story of the goddess Aradia, who came to Earth to champion oppressed peasants in their fight against their feudal overlords and the Catholic Church, are the chants, prayers, spells, and rituals that have become the centerpieces of contemporary pagan faiths.

Also from Leland is Gypsy Sorcery and Fortune Telling, in which he explores the origins of witchcraft, vindictive and mischievous magic, charms and conjurations, love potions, fortune telling, gypsy amulets, and much more. Cosimo’s edition is a replica of the original 1891 book, complete with Leland’s beautifully evocative drawings and diagrams.

Modern wizards will want to add the 1911 book The Book of Ceremonial Magic, by Arthur Edward Waite, to their magical libraries. Culled from the rare and often inaccessible actual manuscripts of magical grimoires from the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries, this classic work on magic and its secrets reveals all you need to know in order to begin communing with the supernatural and appropriating its power. Waite, a preeminent 19th-century expert in esoterica and a cocreator of the famous 1910 Rider-Waite Tarot deck, discusses the difference between white and black magic, the rituals of transcendental magic, the rituals of black magic, the names and offices of evil spirits, the mysteries of “infernal evocation,” and much more. But be warned: Dabbling in the paranormal arts is an adventure undertaken at your own risk.

What happened to medieval magicians caught casting spells? Fifteen-century Inquisitors Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger reveal all in The Malleus Maleficarum, also known as “The Witch Hammer.” A handbook for hunting and punishing witches, this is mostly a compilation of superstition and folklore, but it was taken very seriously at the time it was written and became a kind of spiritual law book used by judges to determine the guilt of the accused. Cosimo’s is a replica edition of the 1928 translation by Montague Summers.

Did you know that Albus Dumbledore’s old pal Nicholas Flamel was a real alchemist of historical lore? Learn about Flamel — and more than fifty other alchemists — in Alchemists Through the Ages, another work by Arthur Edward Waite. The word alchemy conjures up images of charlatans mixing potions and concocting remedies during the Middle Ages in a futile quest to transform lead into gold, but the roots of alchemy can be traced back more than 2,500 years to locales as disparate as Egypt, India, and China, and it was considered serious science until as recently as the 16th century. In this highly regarded volume first published in 1888, Waite examines the lives and works of alchemists from the year 850 through the end of the 18th century. Was alchemy the true precursor to modern chemistry or a pseudo-science populated by quacks? Decide for yourself.

For more on alchemy, check out Alchemy Rediscovered and Restored, by Archibald Cockren. According to practitioners and students of alchemy, the body’s Vital Energy, or Quintessence, is best obtained from minerals and metals. Using everyday language and an accessible style, Cockren — considered the greatest British alchemist of the 20th century — explores the different uses and manifestations of this ancient science, from the physical to the medicinal and even the spiritual. Along the way, he provides engaging sketches of alchemy’s early pioneers, including St. Germain, Basil Valentine, and the legendary Paracelsus, providing a solid foundation to his belief that within the world’s metals “can be found elements to cure all discords in the human body.”

(Technorati tags: Harry Potter, magic, alchemy)

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A new year invariably brings thoughts of change, of self-improvement, of new beginnings. So it is with Cosimo: as we celebrate our new blog, I’ve been taking a look throughout January at our library’s worth of books, current and classic, on topics of self-help, personal development, and refreshening the mind, body, and spirit. I’ll finish with a quick rundown of classic titles to motivate you toward your fresh start in 2007.

The Foundations of Personality, by Abraham Myerson: how our perceptions of character influence all of our everyday interactions

Memory: How to Develop, Train and Use It, by William Walker Atkinson: revealing secrets hidden for almost a century, this book will teach you to train the eye as well as the ear to improve your ability to recall names, faces, numbers, music, facts, and much more

How to Talk: Meeting the Situations of Personal and Business Life and of Public Address, by John Mantle Clapp & Edwin A. Kane: a classic of developing confidence and poise when talking to absolutely anyone, full of sound, solid advice for becoming a more thoughtful and resolute speaker

Advice to Young Men, by William Cobbett: quaint and charming lost work offers 1829’s finest advice on why a young man should not sport with the affections of a young woman, why it’s best to avoid buying anything on credit, why it may be wise not to introduce servants into your household, and more

Live and Be Young, by Vance Thompson: 1920 guidebook to maintaining a cheerful, youthful outlook that today offers a laugh-out-loud hilarious — if unintentionally so — “defense” of privilege, conformity, vapidity, and social discrimination

(Technorati tags: self help, personal development)

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A new year invariably brings thoughts of change, of self-improvement, of new beginnings. So it is with Cosimo: as we celebrate our new blog, I’ve been taking a look throughout January at our library’s worth of books, current and classic, on topics of self-help, personal development, and refreshening the mind, body, and spirit. I’ll start wrapping up with a quick rundown of modern titles to motivate you toward your fresh start in 2007. (Check back in a few days for a brief look at classic titles of the genre.)

Walking the Point: Male Initiation and the Vietnam Experience, by Daryl S. Paulson: military service as call to adventure, initiation, and return home with a new identity as a hero, a veteran

The Perfect Horoscope: Following the Astrological Guidelines Established by Edgar Cayce, by John Willner: why today’s horoscopes are faulty, and why these “perfect horoscopes” match personas with awesome precision and provide greatly enhanced forecasting capabilities

River of a Thousand Tales, by Rao Kolluru: a journey to the East and to the West, outward and inward, and beyond, unveiling mind and matter, nature and nurture, mindfulness and meditation, the individual and the universal

Flowers That Heal: Nutrition, Aromatherapy, Flower Essences & Other Secrets of the Fairies, by Judy Griffin: “Judy’s book… is wonderful, the mythology, the humor, the recipes… The mind of Judy Griffin is fertile, spiritual, beautiful…” –Francine Morrison, MD

Looking for God in All the Wrong Places, by Marie Jones: a spiritual field guide that uses humor, insight, and experience to examine the people, places, and things we often mistake for our Higher Power

(Technorati tags: self help, personal development)

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A new year invariably brings thoughts of change, of self-improvement, of new beginnings. So it is with Cosimo: as we celebrate our new blog, I’ll take a look throughout January at our library’s worth of books, current and classic, on topics of self-help, personal development, and refreshening the mind, body, and spirit. If you’re ready for a fresh start yourself, stay tuned throughout the month for some ideas to get you motivated.

Succeeding With What You Have, by Charles M. Schwab, is a candid essay — first published in American Magazine in November 1916 — by one of the United States’ most astounding rags-to-riches stories. Here, Schwab, one-time president of Carnegie Steel, U.S. Steel, and Bethlehem Steel, offered his secrets for success. Surprisingly, he didn’t believe that genius was required — he believed in hard work. “For thirty-six years I have been moving among workingmen in what is now the biggest branch of American industry, the steel business,” Schwab wrote. “In that time it has been my good fortune to watch most of the present leaders rise from the ranks, ascend step by step to places of power. These men, I am convinced, are not natural prodigies. They won out by using normal brains to think beyond their manifest daily duty.” This is fascinating look at the path to success, one filled with surprising insights, written by one who traveled it.

(Technorati tags: Charles Schwab, business advice)

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A new year invariably brings thoughts of change, of self-improvement, of new beginnings. So it is with Cosimo: as we celebrate our new blog, I’ll take a look throughout January at our library’s worth of books, current and classic, on topics of self-help, personal development, and refreshening the mind, body, and spirit. If you’re ready for a fresh start yourself, stay tuned throughout the month for some ideas to get you motivated.

Sheila Grant has successfully re-imaged over five hundred women since 1985. She worked as a fashion director for TV shows on CBS and NBC, then started her own Image consulting firm, taking individual clients, and conducting seminars and workshops for women. She also became a Ford model at the age of forty-three, after her own re-imaging. Now, she shares her secrets in Any Woman Can!: How to Get a New Look and a New Life. In this inspiring and affirmative book, Grant reveals how you don’t have to be rich, thin, or young to get a new image and a new life. All you need is the will to change, and this book tells you exactly how to do it. In a friendly and accessible voice, Grant offers woman-to-woman advice and practical exercises in wardrobe, makeup, hair, body, voice, posture and more, including dating advice for the 40+ woman. Sheila also shares her own personal story, full of triumphs and tribulations, to demonstrate that if she could re-image her own 40+ self to find confidence, happiness, a new job, and a husband — then any woman can!

(Technorati tags: Any Woman Can, Sheila Grant, makeover)

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A new year invariably brings thoughts of change, of self-improvement, of new beginnings. So it is with Cosimo: as we celebrate our new blog, I’ll take a look throughout January at our library’s worth of books, current and classic, on topics of self-help, personal development, and refreshening the mind, body, and spirit. If you’re ready for a fresh start yourself, stay tuned throughout the month for some ideas to get you motivated.

Upon his election as Lord Rector of St. Andrew’s University, Peter Pan author Sir J.M. Barrie delivered an inaugural address in which he sought to inspire the youth sitting before him. His stirring words on the subject of “courage” are just as invigorating today, more than eight decades after they appeared in book form in 1923. In Courage, Barrie advised young people never to ascribe to an opponent motives meaner than your own; to know what you mean; to insist on helping; to learn how world-shaking situations arise and how they can be countered; and to doubt those who deny you the right of partnership. Charming, candid, and stimulation, Barrie’s address is a rousing example of how he championed the spirit of young people. Of his daring comments, he said, “I sound to myself as if I were advocating a rebellion, though I am really asking for a larger friendship.”

(Technorati tags: Courage, J M Barrie)

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Today, December 15, is the last day to order from Amazon.com using free Super Saver Shipping and still receive books in time for Christmas giving. So I’m putting aside my regular look at the New York Times bestseller list this week and instead pointing out some matching sets of books perfect for readers of your list.

Monday: books for conspiracy buffs
Tuesday: celebrating the season
Wednesday: armchair traveling
Thursday: on the lookout for UFOs and strange creatures
Today: lost classics of literature

continue reading »

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This Friday, December 15, is the last day to order from Amazon.com using free Super Saver Shipping and still receive books in time for Christmas giving. So I’m gonna put aside my regular look at the New York Times bestseller list this week and instead point out some matching sets of books perfect for readers of your list.

Monday: books for conspiracy buffs
Tuesday: celebrating the season
Wednesday: armchair traveling
Today: on the lookout for UFOs and strange creatures
Friday: lost classics of literature

continue reading »

no comments »