David Chadwick selected and edited the accounts that make up To Shine One Corner of the World, drawing on hundreds of interviews and notes amassed in the creation of his acclaimed biography of Suzuki, Crooked Cucumber, and from his ongoing oral history of Shunryu Suzuki. Chadwick himself began study Zen with Suzuki Roshi in 1966 and was ordained by him in 1971. He is also the author of Thank You and OK!: An American Zen Failure in Japan.

Shunryu Suzuki is known to countless readers as the author of the modern spiritual classic Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind. This most influential teacher comes vividly to life in Crooked Cucumber, the first full biography of any Zen master to be published in the West. To make up his intimate and engrossing narrative, David Chadwick draws on Suzuki's own words and the memories of his students, friends, and family. Interspersed with previously unpublished passages from Suzuki's talks, Crooked Cucumber evokes a down-to-earth life of the spirit. Along with Suzuki we can find a way to "practice with mountains, trees, and stones and to find ourselves in this big world."