When I wrote my first blog here a couple months ago, I was a leisured man and imagined I'd be adding a blog every week or so. I'd forgotten that "the days grow short when you reach September." Did they ever! The twelve-hour days didn't end until just two days ago, when suddenly all but the last half of one percent of the work was finished -- and nothing could be done about that remaining half of one percent until I received one last URL from my webmaster. I took a whole day off to do nothing at all.

THE TEACHINGS looks like a simple book. After all, 90% of it is made up of selections from already-published books, books that don't need writing or editing. But it was a difficult book, and what made it difficult were conflicting objectives.

To see what I'm talking about, let's say there are thirty passages that make The Story of B a terrific book. Obviously I couldn't include all thirty of those passages in this book. If I did, people who were enticed to read The Story of B itself would be rightfully outraged to see that they'd already read the best parts here in The Teachings. But I also couldn't include none of them here -- or what would entice them to read The Story of B in the first place? So I include just a third of them here. But I can't include the ten most enticing of the thirty (for the same reason I couldn't include all thirty), and I can't include the ten least enticing (for the same reason I couldn't include none of the thirty). So picking those ten made for some hard sorting to find an assortment representing all degrees of enticement.

Now I hold my breath. Among my books (aside from Ishmael, of course), none is more relevant at this time than this one. I very much doubt that I'll ever produce another that matches it in importance, so its success matters a lot to me. Here it is: http://amzn.to/1qwFsda.

Give it a look!