Buddhist Stupas in Asia: The Shape of Perfection (Lonely Planet Pictorial)
When the Buddha was dying, he instructed his followers to cremate his  body and enclose his remains inside four separate monuments or "stupa-mounds."  These manmade "axial mountains" became the prototype for the monuments that are  so beautifully presented in Joe Cummings'sBuddhist Stupas in Asia. Each  spread features full-color illustrations or photographs, depicting the varying  shapes, designs, and scale of this holy architecture. "People in all the  different cultures that have discovered Buddhism seem to have gone crazy with  joy, building stupas by the millions," writes Cummings, whose other Lonely  Planet titles cover Thailand and Bangkok. "[They are] more than funeral  reliquaries. They are memorials, rather, to the immanent possibility of freedom  from suffering for all beings." Ten pages of transparent architectural overlays  explain how the sacred meets function. This is entertaining learning at its  best--a book that's loaded with knowledge, yet packaged with visual appeal.- -Gail Hudson