Out-of-control wildfires, racing through bone-dry plantlife, are devouring Southern California. Lingering drought is devastating the southeastern U.S. and southern Australia. Global warming isn’t merely a future danger to the world’s supply of fresh water — the threat is already manifest today. In the new Cosimo book Water: The Blood of the Earth: Exploring Sustainable Water Management for the New Millennium, Allerd Stikker — chairman and founder of the Ecological Management Foundation — discusses present and upcoming options for ensuring the supply of clean water even as demand increases around the planet. He also explores the human relationship with water and the spiritual meanings we ascribe to it.

Praise for Water: The Blood of the Earth, from Charles Louis de Maudhuy, advisor to the chairman of Veolia Water:

Allerd Stikker has always reminded me of Alexis de Tocqueville, who would have chosen to study the problem surrounding water rather than the American democracy. He has the same insatiable curiosity, the same energy, same passion, same ease in mixing analysis with intuition, the capacity to draw together different cultures, the same capacity to listen and to dialogue with those who reason from different starting blocks. Water: The Blood of the Earth is the outcome of reflection and action of a cosmopolitan who has remained loyal to his native land, mixing some European thinking of the Age of Enlightenment with some futuristic viewpoints.

And from Antony Burgmans, former chairman of Unilever:

Lack of access to clean and sufficient water in many parts of the world, especially in Asia and Africa, will be a major issue in the coming decades. This book presents an overall view on the diversity of problems and solutions, based on the author’s involvement in water-related projects. Over the course of the years I have followed some of these projects with interest; they inspire us to take concrete actions.

Water: The Blood of the Earth is available at Amazon.com and from other online booksellers.

(Technorati tags: Water The Blood of the Earth, Allerd Stikker, environmental issues, global warming, desalination, drought)

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“Self-help” may be one of the most popular book genres today, with bookstore shelves overloaded with myriad volumes of advice for fixing everything that worries, angers, or frustrates us. But here is a new approach to the age-old desire to solve our personal problems. Instead of taking advice from a stranger, from an author who doesn’t know us, here, in The Self-Inquiry Process: Using Powerful Questions to Awaken Awareness, by integral psychotherapist and energy healer Linda Brierty, new from Cosimo, we learn how to get to know ourselves — and so help ourselves — better than we ever have before.

The Self-Inquiry Process is experiential in nature. With its guidance, you will embark on a process of introspection that will increase your self-awareness and bring your unconscious into consciousness. While other “self-help” books claim to have the answers, this ones asks the questions. It introduces a unique framework with which to understand yourself, and goes on to ask direct questions, some quite challenging, some provocative, others simple and to the point. The questions reveal the sources of suffering that can hinder our everyday experience. Other questions point the way to fulfillment and joy. Each question in the book can take you deeper into relationship with your own Self, and closer to the Self-love that makes so many things possible, including loving others and the world.

The Self-Inquiry Process is available at Amazon.com and from other online booksellers.

(Technorati tags: Self Inquiry Process, Linda Brierty, self-help, self-analysis)

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Dreams can inspire inventions and inspire our waking lives. They worry us and scare us. Some people seek to intensify their dreams, while other discover — inadvertantly — that intense dreams can be prompted by the most unlikely of situations. We all wonder about our dreams and how to interpret them in a way that’s meaningful to us.

And now there’s an indispensable new guide to learning how to pay attention to our dreams and really hear what they are telling us: A Dream Come True: Simple Techniques for Dream Interpretation and Precognitive Dream Recognition, by David L. Kahn, brand new from Cosimo.

Every night when you fall sleep, you have the opportunity to gain new insights into your life, your work, and your relationships through your dreams. Here, in this friendly, down-to-earth guide to interpreting and even guiding your nighttime reveries, discover:

• how emotions are the building blocks of your dreams
• the strength to embrace the fears your dreams reveal
• training your dream habits to mimic your waking habits
• the particular power of lucid dreams
• important differences between long and short dreams
• appreciating color, music, and visual metaphors in dreams
• tapping into your extrasensory perception via dreams
• interpreting precognitive dreams
• and much more.

A sample of Kahn’s friendly style:

If you find yourself having dreams about being chased or fighting something, make a conscious decision next time to stop running and stop fighting. Turn around and face whatever “it” is. This sounds hard to do. How can you love some hideous-looking creature that you perceive is trying to hurt you? You must remember that this is merely a physical representation of your fears and anxieties. Do not fear these dreams. They are opportunities to heal yourself, and to rid yourself of harmful habits. Show your monster love.

Eschewing the hard-and-fast deterministic approach of traditional “dream dictionaries,” while never denying the power of cultural symbols that influence us all, professional dreamer David L. Kahn shows you how to listen to your subconscious and gives you the tools you need to determine what your unique dreams mean to you.

Royalties from the sale of this book benefit The Aid for Traumatized Children Project.

A Dream Come True is available at Amazon.com and from other online booksellers.

(Technorati tags: Dream Come True, David L Kahn, dream analysis, dream interpretation)

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New Age warrior and America’s first corporate shaman Jim Channon of Arcturus.org checks in with a review of the new Cosimo title The Power of Yin, by modern philosophers Hazel Henderson, Jean Houston, and Barbara Marx Hubbard, and edited by Barbara DeLaney. Say Channon:

Want to discover the female archetypes that match the most famous male leaders of recent history? Better yet do you want to sneak inside a pivotal moment in their allegiance to their grander roles in space and time? Would you like to get a take on the feminine version on almost every major issue of our time? This is not just about how “women” think because we see here three very different women with different styles but a uniquely interesting collaborative way about them. They are historically astute, politically savvy, philosophically grounded, strategically practical, heart fully engaging, broadly aware, and beautiful women. I can think of many important current male leaders who have absolutely none of these qualities. I am choosing to take this documentary journal of a female summit meeting as a six month course … reading some every other day. There is a major gestalt every several pages. Savor it. PS. While building the 100 year vision for planet earth with the World Business Academy these three bright stars and a half dozen of their peers accounted for more than half of the finally selected goals for our future.

The Power of Yin is available at Amazon.com and from other online booksellers.

(Technorati tags: Power of Yin, Hazel Henderson, Jean Houston, Barbara Marx Hubbard, Jim Channon)

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Cosimo is delighted to announce the publication of The Power of Yin by renowned modern philosophers Hazel Henderson, Jean Houston, and Barbara Marx Hubbard, and edited by Barbara DeLaney.

This is the first project I’ve shepherded from manuscript to finished book since I started working with Cosimo, and I’m very excited about it. There seems to be something in the zeitgeist lately about the interconnectedness between spirituality, feminism, and eco-awareness — it’s not merely a resurgence of the early essence of Earth Day in the 1970s but a new awareness that feminine attitudes, expression, and approaches to interacting with the world are going to need to be brought to bear if humanity is to make it through the next century.

And Hazel Henderson, Jean Houston, and Barbara Marx Hubbard were talking about this thirty years ago. Here’s the description from the back of the book. Yeah, it’s a little “marketing-y,” but I wrote this, and I honestly believe it:

What are the best tactics to take to head off global environmental disaster? Is industrial society in decline, and if so, how should we manage its dismantling? How can humanity better integrate itself into the continuum of evolving technologies that surround us? Three of the most influential feminist philosophers of the 1970s met over two weekends in 1977 and 1978 to discuss the challenges facing society in the late 20th century… and their revelatory, inspiring conversation, reproduced here for the first time, is startlingly fresh and relevant for us today, as we rise to meet the challenges of the new millennium.

With an uplifting spiritual perspective on the human experience and a uniquely feminine approach to interacting with the universe, Hazel Henderson, Jean Houston, and Barbara Marx Hubbard — with an able assist from editor Barbara DeLaney — here offer a magnificently feminist, grandly humanist, rousingly hopeful approach to the myriad challenges facing planet Earth and her people today.

The Power of Yin is more than a brilliant conversation. It is an invitation to women and men everywhere to express their own genius and empower their highest values and goals, to seek out others who attract them in this quest for personal development, to form ever deeper friendships, and to join together in spirit and in action to help evolve the human community on planet Earth.

Who are the authors? Hazel Henderson is a world-renowned futurist, evolutionary economist, and consultant on sustainable development. Jean Houston is advisor to UNICEF in human and cultural development, and a principal founder of the Human Potential Movement. Barbara Marx Hubbard is president of the Foundation for Conscious Evolution and a cofounder of Washington D.C.’s Committee for the Future.

I know I kinda have to say things like this, but The Power of Yin is a really fascinating book, and an important one, too. So check it out.

(Technorati tags: Power of Yin, Hazel Henderson, Jean Houston, Barbara Marx Hubbard)

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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.

With Cosimo Reports, Cosimo brings to readers important government documents covering vital issues of our day. Understanding Mental Health Issues, issued by the U.S. Surgeon General’s office, recognizes the inextricably intertwined relationship between mental health and physical health and well-being, and emphasizes that mental health and mental illnesses are important concerns at all ages. Laying down a challenge to the nation — to our communities, our health and social services agencies, our policymakers, employers, and citizens — to take action to continue to attend to needs that occur across a lifespan, from the youngest child to the oldest among us, this volume includes links to helpful and informative web sites related to mental health programs, research and media articles, clinical centers and key national mental health organizations. Says Donna E. Shalala, U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services:

For too long the fear of mental illness has been profoundly destructive to people’s lives. In fact mental illnesses are just as real as other illnesses, and they are like other illnesses in most ways. Yet fear and stigma persist, resulting in lost opportunities for individuals to seek treatment and improve or recover. This seminal report provides us with an opportunity to dispel the myths and stigmas surrounding mental illness.

(Technorati tags: mental health, government report, Surgeon General)

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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.

Cosimo’s book of the month for January is Other Voices, Other Scripts, by P. Williamson. For all those working toward recovery from compulsive sexual behaviors, here’s a year’s worth of daily readings with a truly unique approach, a collection of messages spoken by a variety of “voices.” The reader “hears” men and women growing toward recovery — exploring the origins and effects of sex addiction and considering ways to change. But “inner voices” speak and answer too, expressing courage, harsh judgment, defensiveness, pride, despair — and hope. The goal of this kind of interior dialog — the kind of self-talk that we all experience at times — is the evolution of self-knowledge resulting in an integrated sense of self. Reflecting experiences of sex addicts recovering through the adaptation of AA’s Twelve Steps, this is as inspiring for individuals as it is useful for Twelve Step groups.

(Technorati tags: Other Voices Other Scripts, sex addiction, Twelve Steps)

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