Pico Iyer

"A journey through competing ideas of paradise to see how we can live more peacefully in an ever more divided and distracted world"--

"A follow up to Pico Iyer's essay 'The Joy of Quiet,' The Art of Stillness considers the unexpected adventure of staying put and reveals a counterintuitive truth: The more ways we have to connect, the more we seem desperate to unplug. Why would a man who seems able to go everywhere and do anything--like the international heartthrob and Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Famer Leonard Cohen--choose to spend years sitting still and going nowhere? What can Nowhere...

An account of the author's stay in a monastery in Kyoto, Japan, in order to learn about Zen Buddhism, introduces readers to Sachiko--a well-educated, English-speaking, Japanese housewife locked in a traditional marriage but drawn to the author and to Western culture

Recounts the author's life-long obsession with Graham Greene's writings on the experiences of being an outsider, which informed both the author's travels and his private explorations of his relationship with his elusive father.

"From the bestselling author of The Art of Stillness, a revelatory exploration of the abiding clarity and calm to be found in quiet retreat. Pico Iyer has made more than 100 retreats over the past three decades to a small Benedictine hermitage, high abovethe sea in Big Sur, California. He's not a Christian-or a member of any religious group-but his life has been transformed by these periods of time spent in silence. That silence reminds him of what...

Addressing the explosive growth in ancestral travel, this compelling narrative combines intriguing tales of discovery with tips on how to begin your own explorations. Actor and award-winning travel writer Andrew McCarthy's featured story recounts his recent quest to uncover his family's Irish history, while twenty-five other prominent writers tell their own heartfelt stories of connection. Spanning the globe, these stories offer personal takes on...

"An anthology of short, intimate second-person essays by a diverse range of writers, each honoring a fleeting encounter with a stranger met while traveling that left a profound and lasting impact; with a foreword by bestselling author Leslie Jamison"--

"An essential addition to the Stone Reader series, Question Everything is a groundbreaking collection of philosophical essays from some of our foremost thinkers and storytellers. When The Stone Reader--a landmark collection of 133 essays from the New York Times' award-winning philosophy column--first published, in 2015, the world urgently needed insight and wisdom, and for many, the book served as a bulwark of reason against the rising tide of post-fact...

"In 1973, Peter Matthiessen and field biologist George Schaller traveled high into the remote mountains of Nepal to study the Himalayan blue sheep and possibly glimpse the rare and beautiful snow leopard. Matthiessen, a student of Zen Buddhism, was also on a spiritual quest- to find the Lama of Shey at the ancient shrine on Crystal Mountain. As the climb proceeds, Matthiessen charts his inner path as well as his outer one, with a deepening Buddhist...