21 BOOKS THAT CHANGED THE TRAJECTORY OF MY LIFE

1. Anatomy: A Regional Atlas of Human Anatomy - Carmine Clemente - fantastic color illustrations that depict the human body with beauty and accuracy

2. Color Atlas of Human Anatomy: Vol. 1. Locomotor System - Werner Platzer - brilliant level of detail on the bones, joints, ligaments and the muscles’ origins, routes, insertions, and actions

3. Communist Manifesto - Karl Marx - inspiration for the people of the world to unselfishly unite - a task for which we have not yet proven equal

4. Gravity and Grace - Simone Weil - a great, radical Christian philosopher, writer and activist, also author of “Waiting on God”

5. Gestalt Psychotherapy - Perls, Hefferline and Goodman - theory and detailed exercises to help open up a whole new level of self-awareness

6. Growing a Business - Paul Hawken - explores his inspiring observation that most businesses fail, not through a lack of capital, but through a lack of imagination

7. Illuminations - Walter Benjamin - selected essays of unparalleled brilliance selected by Hannah Arendt - esp. his ”Theses on the Philosophy of History”

8. Inner Bridges - Dr. Fritz Smith - first book to clearly lay out how energy and structure integrate in the human bodymind, by the founder of Zero Balancing

9. Leaves of Grass - Walt Whitman - when I first read it assigned in high school, I had no patience for it; now I experience it as the greatest American poem of liberation and love

10. Man’s Presumptuous Brain - A.T.W. Simeons - “Man’s brain battles with his animal instincts and the battle grows more serious with every cultural advance”

11. Modern European Poetry - Willis Barnstone, ed. - the seminal, astonishing collection of the best 20th century poets from Germany, France, Spain, Russia, Greece, and Italy

12. Poemas Humanos/Human Poems - Cesar Vallejo - “the greatest catholic poet since Dante - by catholic I mean universal.” - Thomas Merton

13. Rolfing and Physical Reality - Ida Rolf - provocative excerpts from talks by the Einstein of modern bodymind work, Ida Rolf

14. Selected Poems: Summer Knowledge - Delmore Schwartz - my friends and I read him so much and deeply in our 20’s; Delmore accompanied us through our early lives

15. The Art of Memory - Frances Yates - the greatest book of alternative intellectual history ever written

16. The Beats - Seymour Krim, editor - first book I read that had Kerouac, Ginsburg, Burroughs, and others - had me, by the age of 14, identifying as a beatnik.

17. The Enlightened Heart - Stephen Mitchell, editor - a wonderful collection of transformational verses from Kabir, the Bible, Rumi, Japanese, Chinese, European and American mystics and poets,

18. The Family of Man - Edward Steichen, editor - a visual confirmation and elevation of the humankind’s commonality in work, family, play, birth, war and love

19. The Primal Scream - Arthur Janov - flawed but exciting presentation for how to regain sanity through visceral re-experiencing of early trauma

20. What Color is Your Parachute - Richard Bolles - the book I worked with that led to the decision to become a massage therapist

21. Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind - Shunryu Suzuki - first book for many to read that took Zen out of the realm of theory into actual living practice

Finally I looked this over and realized there is one more book that would have been number 1 in this alphabetized list. It has been so influential that it would almost be like me saying, “blood is important to me” - that is “A Painter of Our Time” by John Berger, an imagined diary of an emigré artist in London in the 1950’s. It has helped me all my life in the endeavor to embody the life of a committed, radical artist.