Full AspenCat Catalog

Boot and Shoe are dogs that live in the same house, eat from the same bowl, and sleep in the same bed but spend their days on separate porches until a squirrel mixes things up.

With a foreword by Nicholas Carr, author of the Pulitzer Prize–finalist The Shallows. Today, society embraces sharing like never before. Fueled by our dependence on mobile devices and social media, we have created an ecosystem of obsessive connection. Many of us now lead lives of strangely crowded isolation: we are always linked, but only shallowly so. The capacity to be alone, properly alone, is one of life's subtlest skills. Real solitude is...

The narrator explains why it is sometimes nice to be alone.

A boy enjoys living quietly by himself at The End of the World until Mr. Constantine Shimmer, "Professional Visionary," builds an inn and an amusement park, demanding that tourists come and have "Fun Without End!"

Why do we often long for solitude but dread loneliness? What happens when the walls we build around ourselves are suddenly removed--or made impenetrable? If privacy is something we count on as a basic right, why are our laws, technology and life-styles increasingly chipping it away? These are among the questions Halpern eloquently explores in these original essays. --back cover

When Buddhist writer Stephen Batchelor turned sixty, he took a sabbatical from his teaching and turned his attention to solitude, a practice integral to the meditative traditions he has long studied and taught. He aimed to venture more deeply into solitude, discovering its full extent and depth. This literary collage documents his multifacted explorations. spending time in remote places, appreciating and making art, practicing meditation and participating...

Text and illustrations describe some of the special places that one can go to be quiet and alone and to imagine, such as a woods, a seashore, a library, or inside oneself.

Addresses the chronic loneliness affecting a high percentage of people today, discussing the vulnerabilities of high-pressure, tech-driven environments and how to view solitude through a spiritual lens.