Table of Contents

Foreword to the SkyLight Lives Edition
Acknowledgments
Introduction

1. The Paradise Garden, 1915–1920
2. The Education of a Brahmin, 1920–1932
3. Christmas Zen, 1932–1938
4. The Towers of Manhattan, 1938–1941
5. Colored Christian, 1941–1947
6. Correspondence, 1947–1950
7. A Priest Inhibited, 1950–1951
8. The Wisdom of Insecurity, 1951–1960
9. Counterculture, 1960–1968
10. The Home Behind Home, 1969–1973

Notes
Books by Alan Watts
Index

About the Author

Monica Furlong was an author and journalist who lived in London. She authored many books, including Longings: Medieval Women Mystics.

Reviews

"For illuminating details on how Watts happened to be in the right place at the right time to bring Zen to the attention of millions, this biography is a must."
—Los Angeles Times

"Lucid, intelligent, and compelling...inspires ne
—Jack Maguire, author of Waking Up: A Week Inside a Zen Monastery and Essential Buddhism

This first biography of the British expatriate turned Sixties counterculture guru, philosophical entertainer, and Zen popularizer is highly entertaining. Drawing on extensive interviews with surviving family members and making balanced use of Watts's amusing but selectively incomplete autobiography, Furlong paints a compelling portrait of a complex, brilliant man who wandered through three marriages and several careers while maintaining a lifelong involvement with Asian spirituality. Included are accounts of Watts's early education, his rise to prominence as an author, his experiments with psychedelic drugs, and his end as an exhausted alcoholic. Furlong successfully re-creates a colorful slice of recent American popular history through the life history of one of its famous protagonists. Paul E. Muller-Ortega, Religious Studies Dept., Michigan State Univ., East Lansing

"For illuminating details on how Watts happened to be in the right place at the right time to bring Zen to the attention of millions, this biography is a must." -Los Angeles Times "Lucid, intelligent, and compelling...inspires ne -Jack Maguire, author of Waking Up: A Week Inside a Zen Monastery and Essential Buddhism