The late Alan Watts, a philosopher, scholar, speaker, writer, and seminal figure in the counterculture of the Beat Generation, is getting a new publishing deal more than 50 years after his death.

Phillip Lester drove his shovel into the earth, smiling as at last he pierced beneath the dry, hard dirt into dark brown fertile soil. “This whole lot used to be a junkyard,” said Lester. Beside him ...

“Alan’s lectures and talks have meant a lot to me throughout my adult life,” Aziz said. So he reached out to Mark Watts, Alan’s son and the keeper of the flame — the family archivist behind the Alan ...