The Road To Utopia

Noah had it easy. On any given day at the Utopia Animal Rescue Ranch in Medina, Texas, Nancy Parker-Simons, her husband Tony Simons, and a willing crew of employees and volunteers care for at least sixty rescued dogs, not to mention numerous cats, chickens, pigs, horses, wild mustangs, donkeys, and a rooster named Alfred Hitchcock—and Kinky Friedman, the rescue ranch's "Gandhi-like figure" who brings Nancy and Tony stray and abused animals, raises money for the rescue ranch, and makes sure no one leaves the ranch without a dog or two. In this entertaining book, Nancy Parker-Simons tells the heartwarming, often hilarious story of the Utopia Animal Rescue Ranch. She describes how a series of "it must have been fate" incidents brought her together with Tony Simons and Kinky Friedman, and how, in 1998, the three of them decided to create a no-kill haven for homeless and abused animals in the Texas Hill Country. Since their first rescue—the "magnificent seven" which were, in fact, forty-one dogs liberated from local animal shelters—"Cousin Nancy" and her crew have rescued over one thousand animals. Parker-Simons tells the fascinating stories of several dozen fortunate dogs, cats, and other animals that have come to the rescue ranch, either to be adopted by new owners or to live out their days in the ranch's "utopia." She also pays tribute to the many supporters who have helped keep the ark afloat, including First Lady Laura Bush, Willie Nelson, Jerry Jeff Walker, Dwight Yoakam, Robert Earl Keen, Molly Ivins, and Don Imus. Everyone who cares about animal welfare will find The Road to Utopia hard to resist.

The quarter century that followed the end of the Second World War was marked by intense social and economic transformation: the changing face of postwar capitalism, a revolution in communications technology, the rise of youth culture, and the pronounced ascent of individual freedom all contributed to a dramatic push to remake, and thus improve, society. This push was especially felt within education, the primary vehicle for modernizing the postwar world from the ground up. Hall-Dennis and the Road to Utopia explores this moment of renewal through a powerful and influential education reform project: 1968's Living and Learning: The Report of the Provincial Committee on Aims and Objectives of Education in the Schools of Ontario. The Hall-Dennis report, as it became known, urged Ontarians to accept a new vision of education in which students were no longer organized in classes, their progress no longer measured by grades, and their experience no longer characterized by the painful acquisition of subjects, but rather by a joyous and open-ended process of learning. This new, democratic system of education was associated with the highest ideals of postwar progress, liberalism, and humanism, yet its recommendations were paradoxically both profoundly radical and fundamentally conservative. Its avant-garde research strategies and controversial "post-literate" curricular reforms were balanced by a pedagogical approach designed to mould students into obedient citizens and productive economic actors. As Canadians once again find themselves asking fundamental questions about the aims and objectives of education under radically changing circumstances, Josh Cole revisits Hall-Dennis to show how the committee and its report represent a significant moment in Canadian cultural and political history, a prescient document in the history of education, and a revealing expression of the fragmentary circumstances of global modernity in the second half of the twentieth century.

Golfers and non-golfers alike will be moved by this powerful story of transformation revealing the secrets to success in life beyond success in our game or work. Luke Chisolm is a talented young golfer set on making the pro tour. But when his first big shot turns into a very public disaster, he escapes the pressures of the game and finds himself unexpectedly stranded in Utopia, Texas. There, he meets Johnny Crawford, an eccentric rancher with a passion for teaching truth, whose faith forces Luke to question not only his past choices, but his direction for the future. Written by author and performance psychologist Dr. David Cook--who has worked with NBA World Champions, National Collegiate Champions, PGA Tour Champions, Olympians, and many Fortune 500 companies--this remarkable and encouraging story reminds us to get our game, and our life, back on course. Now a major motion picture starring Academy Award Winner Robert Duvall and Lucas Black! Also published as Golf's Sacred Journey.

"When David Bramwell's girlfriend left him for someone she described as 'younger, but more mature than you', and citing his endless 'selfish projects' as a reason for their relationship breakdown, he decided he had something to learn about giving. So he embarked on a project. Taking a year off, he journeyed through Europe and America seeking out extraordinary communities that could teach him about how to share. Why? He had a few questions he wanted to answer: Is modern life rubbish? Why do so many of us feel lonely and unfulfilled despite a high standard of living? Are there communities out there who hold the key to happiness? And if so, why do so many of their inhabitants insist on dressing in tie-dye? Where? On his travels he visited an anarchist community in the heart of Copenhagen, had some hair-raising experiences in several free love communities, experienced an epiphany in a spiritual caravan park in Scotland and thought he'd found paradise in a Californian community dreamed up by Aldous Huxley. Most impressive of all was Damanhur, a 1000-strong science fiction-style community in the Alps with an underground temple the size of St Paul's Cathedral, a village of tree houses and a 'fully-functioning time machine'. What happened?!Inspired by the people and places he visited, he returned home with a desire to change. Not just himself but also his neighbourhood and city. Find out how he succeeded in this wry and self-deprecatingly funny spiritual journey that asks some big questions and finds the answers surprisingly simple"--Publisher's description.

Golf is more than a game. Behind every stroke and ace, there are hours of practice. Before every trophy, there is sacrifice. At every driving range, there are successes and failures. And inside every golfer, there is a story. In Golf's Sacred Journey, the Sequel, the book that follows bestselling Golf's Sacred Journey, professional golfer Luke Chisholm returns to his winsome and wise mentor, Johnny Crawford, for what he's best at: advice. This time, Luke needs help of a different sort. He needs guidance on playing in the most difficult golf tournament in the world: the U.S. Open. Victory is in sight. From bestselling author and performance psychologist Dr. David Cook, Golf's Sacred Journey, the Sequel is the fascinating byproduct of counseling thousands of athletes over the decades--from PGA Champions to Olympic athletes. His expertise weaves throughout this suspenseful and memorable sequel. Luke's story unfolds from the practice course of Utopia, Texas, to the fairways of the U.S. Open. It's there that T.K., Luke's rival, re-enters the picture. Their rivalry comes to a head at the U.S. Open. Their clash is epic, the payoffs and costs are great. In this memorable book, readers will acquire lessons about golf and life that they never expected as Luke and T.K. overcome gripping fears, trials, and brokenness as they pursue their God-given dreams. Golf's Sacred Journey, the Sequel will deeply inspire readers both on and off the green. This is a story of two golfers. This is a story of redemption. And in the end, it's not just about a game.

As the greatest book of Jewish mysticism, the Zohar is a revered and much-studied work. Yet, surprisingly, scholarship on the Zohar has yet to pay attention to its most unique literary device—the presentation of its insights while its teachers walk on the road. In these pages, rabbi and scholar David Greenstein offers the first examination of the "walking on the road" motif. Greenstein's original approach hones in on how this motif expresses the struggles with spatiality and the everyday presented in the Zohar. He argues that the walking theme is not a metaphor for realms to be collapsed into or transcended by the holy, as conventional interpretations would have it. Rather, it conveys us into those quotidian spaces that are obdurately present alongside the realm of the sacred. By embracing the reality of mundane existence, and recognizing the prosaic dimensions of the worldly path, the Zohar is an especially exceptional mystical treatise. In this volume, Greenstein makes visible a singular, though previously unstudied, achievement of the Zohar.

An instant New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller from one of the world’s leading economists, offering a grand narrative of the century that made us richer than ever, but left us unsatisfied “A magisterial history.”—​Paul Krugman Named a Best Book of 2022 by Financial Times * Economist * Fast Company Before 1870, humanity lived in dire poverty, with a slow crawl of invention offset by a growing population. Then came a great shift: invention sprinted forward, doubling our technological capabilities each generation and utterly transforming the economy again and again. Our ancestors would have presumed we would have used such powers to build utopia. But it was not so. When 1870–2010 ended, the world instead saw global warming; economic depression, uncertainty, and inequality; and broad rejection of the status quo. Economist Brad DeLong’s Slouching Towards Utopia tells the story of how this unprecedented explosion of material wealth occurred, how it transformed the globe, and why it failed to deliver us to utopia. Of remarkable breadth and ambition, it reveals the last century to have been less a march of progress than a slouch in the right direction.