The Buddhist on Death Row
World of Books
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The Buddhist on Death Row by David Sheff
The #1 New York Times bestselling author of Beautiful Boy explores the transformation of Jarvis Jay Masters who has become one of America's most inspiring Buddhist practitioners while locked in a cell on death row. Jarvis Jay Masters's early life was a horror story whose outline we know too well. Born in Long Beach, California, his house was filled with crack, alcohol, physical abuse, and men who paid his mother for sex. He and his siblings were split up and sent to foster care when he was five, and he progressed quickly to juvenile detention, car theft, armed robbery, and ultimately San Quentin. While in prison, he was set up for the murder of a guard--a conviction which landed him on death row, where he's been since 1990. At the time of his murder trial, he was held in solitary confinement, torn by rage and anxiety, felled by headaches, seizures, and panic attacks. A criminal investigator repeatedly offered to teach him breathing exercises which he repeatedly refused. Until desperation moved him to ask her how to do that meditation shit. With uncanny clarity, David Sheff describes Masters's gradual but profound transformation from a man dedicated to hurting others to one who has prevented violence on the prison yard, counseled high school kids by mail, and helped prisoners--and even guards--find meaning in their lives. Along the way, Masters becomes drawn to the principles that Buddhism espouses--compassion, sacrifice, and living in the moment--and he gains the admiration of Buddhists worldwide, including many of the faith's most renowned practitioners. And while he is still in San Quentin and still on death row, he is a renowned Buddhist thinker who shows us how to ease our everyday suffering, relish the light that surrounds us, and endure the tragedies that befall us all.There is a new revolution in China, one which intends to unite the people of this vast and populous nation as never before; both highways, roadways and the information superhighway, are being constructed simultaneously, leapfrogging a rural economy into the modern-day information age. In China, I feel the explosive combination of forces aligning to create the kind of change that alters the course of history, writes David Sheff in the introduction to China Dawn, his latest book. About the entrepreneurs who are trying to spark a social transformation by bringing the latest information technology to the planet's most populous country, China Dawn, researched over three years, is the chronicle of the nascent Chinese technology revolution -- a movement with, Sheff says, the immodest goal of transforming the life of more than a fifth of the world's people.
David Sheff's articles and interviews have appeared in Playboy, The New York Times Magazine, Rolling Stone, Wired, Outside, Forbes ASAP, The Los Angeles Times Magazine, Esquire and Observer Magazine in England, Foreign Literature in Russia and Playboy (Shueisha) in Japan. He is currently on assignment for Fortune and Vanity Fair. His book, Game Over, was published by Random House in the United States and Hodder and Stoughton in Great Britain as well as in Japan, Germany, France, Italy, Brazil, Israel, and other countries. Vintage published the paperback edition in 1993. The book, reissued in 1999 with a new introduction, was universally praised by reviewers for Time, Newsweek, Fortune, Forbes, USA Today, The New York Review of Books, and hundreds of domestic and international magazines and newspapers. The New York Times called it beguiling and irresistible. . . almost as hypnotic as a successful video game. The Houston Chronicle said, This book is a must-read. Game Over is about as readable as a business book can be. The Chicago Tribune called it A cross between Barbarians at the Gate and The Soul of the New Machine.
The Playboy Interviews with John Lennon and Yoko Ono, conducted in 1980, became a Literary Guild Selection book. Other interviews, including those with Ansel Adams, nuclear physicist Ted Taylor, Gore Vidal, Steve Jobs, Tom Hanks, Sting, Scott Peck, Betty Friedan, and Keith Haring, received wide recognition, as did his Portrait of a Generation in Rolling Stone. His radio documentaries for National Public Radio on John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath and Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird won several awards. He also wrote and edited Heart Play: Unfinished Dialogue, which won a Grammy Award nomination for Best Spoken Word Recording of 1984.
Sheff is currently a contributing editor of Playboy, Wired, and Yahoo! Internet Life and is on assignment for Fortune and Vanity Fair. He was formerly an editor of New West and California magazines..
He attended the University of California at Berkeley, where he received a degree in social science. He lives in San Francisco, California with his wife and three children.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781982128456 |
| ISBN 10 | 1982128453 |
| Title | The Buddhist on Death Row |
| Author | David Sheff |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Hardback |
| Publisher | Simon & Schuster |
| Year published | 2020-08-04 |
| Number of pages | 272 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |