"I saw a woman, back turned to me, shoulders covered by the masses of her own dark hair. Suddenly, she turned round, and I saw that her face was wet with tears. And when she looked up at me with my own eyes, I saw that her sorrow was my sorrow, that her face was my face, that I had caused her sorrow and that she had caused mine, that the sorrow of the world was our sorrow, that the face of the world was wet with our tears, and that our tears filled the oceans and rivers, and came down in rain, and watered the world with sorrow. "And the thing I regretted most was that I could not tell her of...

Hans Apel (1895-1989) was a German economist and younger brother of the musicologist Willi Apel. He studied at the University of Berlin and rose to become managing director of a Berlin-based company. In 1935 he left Germany and finally immigrated to the United States in 1937. He earned a Ph.D. from Boston University in 1945. From 1950 until his retirement in 1961, he was chairman of the Department of Economics at the University of Bridgeport, Connecticut. He later returned to Germany traveled extensively in Eastern Europe in pursuit of his research objectives during a time when travel...

Mario Wirz is wrestling with a problem of major proportions--the constant threat of death hanging over his shoulder. Death is his muse. It is a shadow that hangs over all of us, but it is the fate of some to feel it more keenly, to live with it minute-by-minute, hour-by-hour, and day-by-day. These poems hone in relentlessly on this topic, until one is inexorably affected by their stark, existential reality. Wirz's poems have been published in French, Italian, Ukrainian, Polish, Finnish, Greek, Hungarian, and Chinese, but it took ten years for his first novel to be published in English, and...

Mario, a 35-year-old gay actor, knows that he doesn't have long to live. For five years, he has been surviving himself. For five years, the virus has schooled him in fear. Mario lies in the prison of his room and gives himself failing grades for his life-an F for his lack of success, and F for his pathological need for intimacy, and F for his neurotic lack of independence. Locked within him is resentment toward his mother, the lifelong yearning for a father, and a pimply-faced kid who cowers and refuses to grow up. Mario stumbles through the wilderness of men and waits for the call. He's...

What is the true test of spirituality? Is it loyalty to a master, group, or teaching? Or is it having the courage to act on one's deepest convictions, even in the face of disapproval and sanction? This is the question that confronts Kip Morgan. Kip is a karma seeker-an individual committed to testing himself by means of his own choices. For such people, who are engaged in an experiment with unknown forces, there is no way to prove that they are fit to discover what they seek except by doing it. As a young man, Kip joins the League, one of the burgeoning new age spiritual groups of the late...

ONE OF THE most challenging aspects of life is difficulty of anticipating and managing our relationships with other people. Whether we're looking for love, dealing with the complexities of marriage, seeking a reliable business partner, or coping with a co-worker, our relationships seem to be ruled by some mysterious chemistry that causes us to get along easily with some and pits us contentiously against others. It's only natural for us to seek some key to this mysterious chemistry. If only we had a practical, easy-to-grasp method that enabled us to make informed choices regarding our...