In this book Stephen Phillips focuses on one of the most important poems about meditation in world literature, as understood by two of the greatest philosophers of India, one classical, one modern. Sankara's commentaries on the Upanisads are a core of the Vedanta tradition and Aurobindo is a towering figure of 20th-century Hindu thought. This is the first time their approaches have been studied together.The Isa (c. 500 BCE) an “Upanisad” belongs to a genre of “

The book An ABE’s Logbook by author Stephen D. Phillips is a true story of accounts taken from his childhood and the written entries from his personal journals he kept while he served in the United States Navy from 1985 to 2005. The story begins in his childhood as he attended junior high school at Rosemont Middle School in Fort Worth, Texas, attending there from the sixth to eighth grades. These years and their events shaped and molded his life. The encouragement of family, with their lov...

The Recipient’s Son is a coming-of-age story set at the US Naval Academy in the 1990s. By the author of Proximity, it tells the story of Donald Durago, a young man whose father was killed in the Vietnam War. For his heroic actions under fire, his father was a recipient of the Medal of Honor. His father’s heroism also provides Durago with an appointment to the US Naval Academy, since it is as a benefit offered to children of Medal of Honor recipients. However, his father’s legacy also carri...

For serious yoga practitioners curious to know the ancient origins of the art, Stephen Phillips, a professional philosopher and sanskritist with a long-standing personal practice, lays out the philosophies of action, knowledge, and devotion as well as the processes of meditation, reasoning, and self-analysis that formed the basis of yoga in ancient and classical India and continue to shape it today.In discussing yoga's fundamental commitments, Phillips explores traditional teaching...

When a young mason is thrown from the top of a new building in London’s Templar Citadel, what initially looks like an accident suddenly starts to look suspicious to Gervase Pitt.Thirteenth century building sites were notoriously dangerous, but Gervase's record is exemplary. The master carpenter and architect realises this might be indicative of a wider problem facing his building project.More deaths and a kidnapping leads him and his family to the murky world of crime withi...

Opryland USA attracted millions of visitors each year and gave many celebrities their first taste of show business. As the "Home of American Music," Opryland USA still lives on in the hearts and minds of those who visited this show that made country music famous. By the late 1960s, the Ryman Auditorium - the fifth home of the Grand Ole Opry - was a deteriorating firetrap in a seedy part of Nashville, yet it still attracted thousands of people each weekend to the "show that made country mus...

Being hanged, in early 13th Century London, was a slow and painful process of strangulation. But for a shy fourteen-year-old with little grasp on the ways of the world, it was terrifying. Especially when he was innocent of the murder of which he was accused. Indeed, apprentice goldsmith Nick Pitt hardly understood what had happened to his master, or why he was accused of his callous slaying.The last thought in his mind, as the rope tightened around his slender neck, was of his fami...

In AD1215, Gervase Pitt inadvertently becomes involved in affairs of state when he’s called upon to attend Runnymede to witness sealing of the Great Charter (later known as Magna Carta). Thinking he isn’t directly affected, he’s concerned to discover he must investigate the death of a rebel baron’s retainer at Windsor, later that day.Unable immediately to resolve matters, he finds himself increasingly tied up in events which will lead to the killing of a close friend … and the circ...

Almost as soon as Richard the Lionheart became king, his younger brother Prince John was plotting to gain the crown of England for himself. His claim was tenuous because for many people, their nephew Arthur of Brittany, had the superior claim. He was the son of an elder brother Geoffrey. But Arthur was a young child which would mean a regency if Richard died without an heir.John’s reputation for unreliability was reinforced by his attempts to ally himself to Richard’s arch-rival, K...

The morning of the enthronement, Sunday 6th July 1214, was as bright a July day as anyone could remember in Durham. The sun reflected off the pale yellow walls of castle and cathedral, making them sparkle like gold, and the flowers in the garden turned their faces to track its progress across the sky.Brown female blackbirds twittered angrily at their jet black mates, whose yellow beaks were crammed full of worms and grubs to fee the chicks. Dart-shaped swallows wheeled in the sky, ...

In AD1211 a young woman is brutally slain in the French city of Marseille – the first in a series of killings which will terrorise the city and create a difficult challenge for the new castellan of the castle, Sir Orvin de Villeneuve.Unrelated to these events master carpenter and building designer, Gervase Pitt, his wife and apprentice son are sent to the French city at the behest of Father Alain, Master of the Knights Templar in England. Their ostensible role is to accompany Lady ...

SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2023 WALKLEY BOOK AWARDSHORTLISTED FOR THE 2023 AUSTRALIAN POLITICAL BOOK OF THE YEARSHORTLISTED FOR THE 2024 ABIA GENERAL NON-FICTION BOOK OF THE YEARWINNER OF THE 2024 DANGER AWARD FOR TRUE CRIME'There is no doubt the truth would have been concealed and our concerns buried without Nick McKenzie's relentless pursuit of justice.' SAS Afghanistan vet...