Originally published in 1972, Michael Murphy’s Golf in the Kingdom has become one of the bestselling golf books of all time and has been hailed as "a golf classic if any exists in our day" (John Updike) and "a masterpiece on the mysticism of golf" (San Francisco Chronicle).
Golf in the Kingdom introduced Shivas Irons, the golf pro and philosopher with whom Murphy played a mythic round of golf on Scotland’s Burningbush links, a round that profoundly altered his game and vision. Shivas’s insights about competition, life, and "true gravity," all instilled in him by his elusive mentor Seamus MacDuff, captured the imaginations and the devoted following of students of the inner game of golf.
The Kingdom of Shivas Irons is the enchanting story of Murphy’s return to Scotland to investigate reports of further visitations by Shivas Irons and to answer questions about him and MacDuff that have haunted Murphy since his original trip to Burningbush some thirty-one years before. Murphy and his companion, Buck Hannigan, a skeptical physicist fascinated by Shivas’s connections to metanormal events, embark on a magical quest for Irons and MacDuff–and their wisdom about golf and human potential.
From the mystical golf course surrounding MacDuff’s estate in Scotland, across the world to the first Russian Open Golf Championship, and finally to Pebble Beach on the California Coast, The Kingdom of Shivas Irons is a delightful exploration of the deep truths about the game of golf and a provocative inquiry into our remarkable possibilities for growth and transformation.
Author
Michael Murphy
In 1961 Michael Murphy cofounded, with Richard Price, the Esalen Institute, a learning center in California that fosters change in individuals and society, and has hosted thousands of human potential workshops and conferences led by such notables as Joseph Campbell, Aldous Huxley, Joan Borysenko, Allen Ginsberg, and Linus Pauling, to name a few. In 1980, he helped create the Esalen Institute’s Soviet American Exchange program, which, among other things, initiated the first live television space bridges and hosted president of the Russian Federation Boris Yeltsin during his first visit to the United States. Murphy is the author of The Future of the Body, Golf in the Kingdom, and An End to Ordinary History, and the coauthor of The Psychic Side of Sports. He lives in San Rafael, California.
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