Stephen Mitchell

An ugly duckling spends an unhappy year ostracized by the other animals before he grows into a beautiful swan.

From the author of The Gospel According to Jesus comes a new adaptation of the psalms. Leading biblical scholar and translator Stephen Mitchell translates fifty of the most powerful and popular bible psalms to create poems that recreate the music of the original Hebrew verse.

In this brilliant retelling of the classic fairy-tale about the transcendent power of love, author Stephen Mitchell writes, "There are two kinds of women: those who marry princes and those who marry frogs." While the frogs never become princes, over the course of an ordinary marriage, a prince may turn into a frog. However, Mitchell tells of a different kind of love story. This adult fairytale is the story of a meditative frog's love for a rebellious...

With the help of a magic tinderbox, a soldier finds a fortune and pursues a princess imprisoned in a castle.

"In A Mind at Home with Itself, Byron Katie illuminates one of the most profound ancient Buddhist texts, The Diamond Sutra (newly translated in these pages by distinguished scholar Stephen Mitchell) to reveal the nature of the mind and to liberate us from painful thoughts, using her revolutionary system of self-inquiry called 'The Work.' Byron Katie doesn't merely describe the awakened mind; she empowers us to see it and feel it in action. At once...

A fascinating look at the key components of romantic love-sex, idealization, aggression, self-pity, guilt, and commitment-argues that romance does not diminish in a long-term relationship, describes the barriers to lasting love, and offers helpful advice on how to promote an enduring love by eliminating self-destructive efforts to protect oneself from its risks.

Mitchell has composed this innovative work drawn from the work of Lao-tzu's disciple, Chuang-tzu and Confucius's grandson, Tzu-ssu to offer Western readers a path into reality by providing commentary that shows what it means to be in harmony with the way things are. Its wisdom provides a psychological and moral acuity as deep as the Tao Te Ching itself.

Breathing, you invisible poem! World-space in pure continuous interchange with my own being. Equipose in which I rhythmically transpire. Written only four years before Rilke's death, this sequence of sonnets, varied in form yet consistently structured, stands as the poet's final masterwork. In these meditations on the constant flux of our world and the ephemerality of experience, Rilke envisions death not only as one among many of life's transformations...

A retelling of three tales from the "Arabian Nights" --"Ali Baba and the 40 thieves," "Abu Keer and Abu Seer," and "Aladdin and the magic lamp."