Best Selling Books by Pico Iyer

De mai bine de trei decenii, Pico Iyer, unul dintre cei mai apreciați autori de cărți de călătorie, este prieten cu Dalai Lama. Pe parcursul acestor ani, prin intermediul unor conversații intime, a ajuns să îl cunoască așa cum doar puțini se pot lăuda că îl știu. În paginile acestei cărți, Iyer realizează un portret unic al uneia dintre cele mai insolite personalități a timpului nostru, explicând ideile și activitatea lui Dalai Lama despre politică, știință, tehnologie și religie. Acest volum nu este o biografie, ci o analiză jurnalistică extinsă despre o persoană care a adunat înțelepciune cât pentru mai multe vieți, așa cum cred budiștii tibetani. Iyer își organizează observațiile prin descrieri inteligente ale diferitelor aspecte ale activității și personalității lui Dalai Lama: personalitate, călugăr, filosof, politician. Aceasta îi permite să sondeze diverse laturi ale Sfinției Sale, Iyer reamintind cititorilor de anumite paradoxuri: Dalai Lama este profund empiric și, cu toate acestea, are convingeri, precum reîncarnarea, care desfid observația. Este o persoană publică, dar la fel de mult este extrem de implicat în practicile religioase elaborate. Scopul acestei cărți este, în cele din urmă, simplu: să ni-l prezinte pe omul Dalai Lama.

At dawn I wake up to bells . . . red-tailed hawks above the golden pampas grass and the great, still blue plate of the Pacific far below . . . Many places offer you beauty, grandeur, spaciousness; none but Big Sur, in my experience, tells you so powerfully that all those blessings lie within. —Pico Iyer on Big Sur, California Some places move us at a profound level—with a kind of inner beauty that puts us in direct touch with the spirit. It might be a temple, a church, a monument, a wayside shrine, or a landscape feature that is saturated in the ambience of ancient sacred traditions. Such places are worth taking the trouble to visit. They add meaning to our lives, awakening a sense of beauty, tranquility or awe. From the prehistoric megaliths of Carnac in Brittany to the Buddhist temple complex of Borobodur in Java, from the giant medicine wheel at Bighorn, Wyoming in the USA to the Confucian Temple of Heaven in Beijing, this book will guide you on a journey to 100 of the world’s most spiritually uplifting sites. Accompanying the superb photographs are evocative descriptions of each place, many from esteemed writers who share their personal responses in their own inimitable style. Read Joseph Williams III on Pipestone in Minnesota, Jan Morris on Croagh Patrick in County Mayo, Michael Ondaatje on the Arankale Forest Monastery in Sri Lanka, and more. And if you wish to seek out these places for yourself, there is a helpful gazetteer at the back of the book giving key facts for visitors. By immersing ourselves in those special places where landscape, art, and spirit meet in a radiant intersection, we enlarge our perspective on life. This book gives us the inspiration and knowledge to do so.

Il paradiso: giardino incantato, dimora finale, miraggio di eterna beatitudine. Ma cos''è davvero, e soprattutto dove si trova? Pico Iyer si propone di rispondere a queste domande impossibili con una ricerca possibile: si mette sulle tracce del paradiso non seguendo evanescenti traiettorie celesti, bensí esplorando questo nostro mondo, dall''Iran al Giappone, dal Kashmir alla Corea, da Gerusalemme allo Sri Lanka, da Belfast a Varanasi. Tra monumenti sacri millenari, territori attraversati da profondi conflitti religiosi, orizzonti mistici, Pico Iyer compie un personalissimo pellegrinaggio che illumina il paradiso in tutta la sua straordinaria, quotidiana, umana semplicità. «Una vera e propria visita guidata nell''animo umano... Un capolavoro». Elizabeth Gilbert «Un libro di viaggi interiori raccontati attraverso straordinari luoghi esteriori». «The Washington Post» Si può ancora contemplare la speranza di un paradiso oggi? Ma cos''è davvero il paradiso, e soprattutto dove si trova? Pico Iyer si propone di rispondere a queste domande impossibili con una ricerca possibile: si mette sulle sue tracce non seguendo evanescenti traiettorie celesti, bensí esplorando questo nostro mondo, dall''Iran al Giappone, dal Kashmir alla Corea, da Gerusalemme allo Sri Lanka, da Belfast a Varanasi. Entra in chiese, mo- schee, templi, interroga statue del Buddha e tombe di poeti, si immerge tra i vicoli delle città vecchie e costeggia le rive del Gange, visita il Santo Sepolcro e il Museo della rivoluzione islamica. In ogni luogo Iyer dà vita a straordinari affreschi sinestetici in cui odori, rumori, sapori si mescolano a meraviglie architettoniche, ai racconti delle persone che incontra, a un oceanico sentimento di sacralità. In questo affascinante vagabondare spirituale, Iyer raggiunge di volta in volta la meta prefissata, con il sospetto di non essersene mai allontanato: perché forse il paradiso non fluttua in un vento etereo, né ha la forma di uno spazio delimitato da confini precisi, ma assomiglia piuttosto a una particolare dimensione interiore che esiste in ognuno di noi. La vita a metà conosciuta è un diario di viaggio unico, un inno a un particolare modo dell''essere, radicato nel rispetto profondo per ciò che non si conosce, nella capacità di mettere in discussione ciò che si crede di conoscere, e nel desiderio di conoscere sempre di piú, del mondo, di noi stessi e degli altri.

È difficile stare al passo in un mondo che non accenna a tirare il freno. Le gratificazioni professionali, la serenità in famiglia, il divertimento, rischiano di diventare mete irraggiungibili, anziché approdi sicuri. La ricerca incessante di soddisfazione sembra il modo migliore per non trovarla. Ma un’alternativa c’è, ed è la stessa praticata da viaggiatori instancabili e maestri del pensiero come Leonard Cohen e Thomas Merton, Henry Thoreau e il Dalai Lama, Marcel Proust ed Emily Dickinson: basta scegliere di rimanere immobili. Per mezz’ora o un mese, nella propria stanza o su un eremo himalayano, non importa. Ciò che conta è il coraggio di staccare la spina, di rifugiarsi in uno spazio tutto per sé, per riuscire a osservare la vita dalla giusta distanza e quindi affrontarla con più grinta e saggezza. «Preferirei di no» rispondeva Bartleby lo scrivano, a metà dell’Ottocento, alle richieste del suo datore di lavoro. «Preferirei di no» è quello che, secondo Pico Iyer, dovremmo dire tutti di fronte al pericolo che lo stress si trasformi presto in un’epidemia globale, come rivelano le stime dell’Organizzazione mondiale della sanità. Correre senza sosta può impedirci di vedere dove stiamo andando. La vera rivoluzione, l’unica in grado di dare all’esistenza un valore nuovo, è smettere di fare. E cominciare a essere.

This wide-ranging boxed set of ten TED Books titles covers everything from architecture to business, space travel to love: The Terrorist’s Son, The Mathematics of Love, The Art of Stillness, The Future of Architecture in 100 Buildings, Beyond Measure, Judge This, How We’ll Live on Mars, Why We Work, The Laws of Medicine, and Follow Your Gut. Provocative, intelligent, and forward-thinking, the first ten TED Books is perfect for any curious reader interested in technology, design, and creative thinking. The Terrorist’s Son is the story of the man who planned the 1993 World Trade Center bombing—and the son who chose a different path. The Mathematics of Love is a must-have for anyone who wants to better understand the patterns of their love life. In The Art of Stillness, travel writer Pico Iyer reveals a counterintuitive truth: The more ways we have to connect, the more we seem desperate to unplug. The Future of Architecture in 100 Buildings captures the thoughtful intelligence and the sheer whimsy of the world’s most inspired and future-looking buildings. Beyond Measure reveals how organizations can make huge changes with surprisingly small steps and ultimately transform their company culture. Chip Kidd’s Judge This is a playful look at the importance of first impressions—in design and in life—exposing the often invisible beauty and betrayal in simple design choices ones most of us never even think to notice. In How We’ll Live on Mars award-winning journalist Stephen Petranek makes the case that living on Mars is an essential back-up plan for humanity and will happen far sooner than we imagine. In the groundbreaking Why We Work Barry Schwartz dispels a deeply ingrained myth: The reason we work is primarily to get a paycheck. Pulitzer Prize–winning author Siddhartha Mukherjee reveals an urgent philosophy in The Laws of Medicine on the little-known principles that govern medicine. In Follow Your Gut scientist Rob Knight and journalist Brendan Buhler explain why the microscopic life inside us matters to everyone.

The artist combines wide-angle photographs of landscapes from throughout the world that exhibit fundamental, formal similarities and rhythms by connecting them with a common horizon line.

A collection of 26 inspiring tales.

Unexpected stories from unexpected places. The authors of these 30 real-life tales find passion, surprise and illumination in the middle of Borneo or Beijing, in a Mayan mountain village, along a timeworn trail in Tuscany, on an isolated South Pacific island, or under a desert moon in Mali.

The stunning photographs in Living Faith are the result of over a decade and a half of travel and observation. From the cities, small towns and villages of India -- a country of almost unparalleled diversity where every major religion of the world has found a home -- Dinesh Khanna brings us images of faith as it endures in everyday life. Priests light up the night on the ghats of Varanasi in honor of Shiva; Sufis sing ecstatic love songs to Allah at the tomb of Nizamuddin Auliya; young boys in Ladakh prepare for the austere life of a Buddhist Lama; and devotees offer wax models of what they desire to Mary at her church in Mumbai. Meanwhile, on the highways and lanes of India, taxi and truck drivers carry on their dashboards little shrines to their gods; Jain nuns walk barefoot for miles on an eternal pilgrimage; and people stop along busy roads to offer prayers at modest temples and tombs. Living Faith is an intimate, revealing record of a deeply spiritual way of life. It acknowledges the strength of private worship and shared faith, which ultimately transcends the more visible but short-lived realities of discord.

The ultimate challenge for the young quizzer - Over the last two years, the Puffin inter-school quiz competitions, held in India''s major metros, have proved hot favourites with young quiz aficionados. The first Puffin Quiz Book, containing questions from these popular quizzes, was published last year to great acclaim. Here at last is the long-awaited second volume of the Puffin Quiz Book, featuring questions from the recent Puffin quizzes, supplemented by hundreds of all-new questions from quizmaster Srinjoy Chowdhury''s veritable quiz bank which have never been asked in a quiz. As in the first quiz book, the questions in The Puffin Quiz Book 2 are arranged in sets of eight, making it easy for the book to be used for an impromptu quiz among friends. For the individual reader dipping into the book, the actual atmosphere of a quiz is suitably replicated by an array of intriguing questions. There are 800 questions in all, and some of them will stump even the most avid of quizzers. There are also special sets of questions on key topics like Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings, the 2003 Cricket World Cup, James Bond, Sherlock Holmes, Sourav Ganguly and Indian achievers in the Olympics. A delight for any young quiz enthusiast, the fun- and information-packed Puffin Quiz Book 2 will enthrall and entertain readers for days on end.

"This collection presents 31 globe-girdling tales that run the gamut from close-encounter safaris to loss-of-face follies, hair-raising rides to culture-leaping brides, eccentric expats to mind-boggling repasts, wrong roads taken to agreements mistaken"--Back cover.

L''endroit où le voyageur et chroniqueur Pico Iyer aimerait le plus aller ? Nulle part. Lors de cette méditation lyrique et surprenante, il revisite l''incroyable clairvoyance qui vient avec l''immobilité. Dans notre monde de mouvement perpétuel et de distractions, il ébauche quelques tactiques que nous pouvons tous utiliser pour gagner quelques minutes chaque jour, ou quelques jours chaque saison. C''est un texte pour tous ceux qui se sentent submergés par les sollicitations du monde extérieur.

Über den LUXUS der Entschleunigung In einer Welt voller Angebote und Möglichkeiten stellt sich der bekannte Essayist und Autor Pico Iyer dem letzten großen Abenteuer: der Kunst des Innehaltens, der Entschleunigung. Nachdem er selbst ein Leben lang unterwegs war, von den Osterinseln über Katmandu bis Kuba, zeigt er uns, wie wir in einer Welt der ständigen Beschleunigung durch das Innehalten, die Konzentration auf uns selbst, mehr Inspiration, Kreativität und Ausgeglichenheit erreichen können. Denn in einer Welt voller Ablenkung ist der größte Luxus, völlig bei sich zu sein. Mit stimmungsvollen Farbfotografien

Zak Ebrahim ›Der Sohn des Terroristen‹: Beeindruckendes Plädoyer gegen Hass Pico Iyer ›Die Kunst des Innehaltens‹: Wie kann man in einer Welt voller Ablenkungen ganz bei sich sein? Hannah Fry ›Die Mathematik der Liebe‹: Scheinbar unvereinbare Gegensätze: Liebe und Mathematik Marc Kushner ›Die Zukunft der Architektur in 100 Bauwerken‹: Die ungewöhnlichsten Bauwerke der Welt Rob Knight ›Wir sind viele‹: Das Wirken unserer Mikroorganismen Chip Kidd ›Judge This‹: Ein aufregender Tag mit dem Design-Guru

. Uno de los primeros dos libros de la serie de TED Books En un mundo en el que, gracias a las redes sociales, se nos ofrece distracción las 24 horas y en la cual nos sentimos a la vez sobrecargados de información pero con miedo a perdernos algo, este libro trae una solución simple. Detente, aunque sea durante poco tiempo. Las recompensas serán enormes. Pico Iyer nos muestra en este libro como muchos han encontrado la verdadera riqueza en la quietud, desde Marcel Proust hasta Blaise Pascal pasando por Phillipe Starck. Explora también una verdad contraria a la intuición como que mientras más posibilidades tenemos de conectarnos, más deseamos desesperadamente desconectarnos. En las dos charlas TED que ha dado reflexiona sobre la razón por la cual tanta gente acude a técnicas como el yoga, la meditación o el tai chi. No son modas new age, sino nuevas formas de conectar con una era pasada. También existe una tendencia a adoptar fines de semana sabáticos de Internet, desconectando la tecnología y recuperando la costumbre como la conversación y las comidas familiares.

Chef d''État en exil, défenseur de la cause tibétaine, prix Nobel de la Paix, voix majeure du bouddhisme contemporain, le Dalaï-Lama est une personnalité singulière aux facettes multiples : un homme qui médite quatre heures chaque matin mais enchaîne les déplacements dans le monde entier ; un grand philosophe et théologien mais qui sait rester simple et accessible ; un intellectuel qui débat avec des scientifiques mais consulte les oracles à Dharamsala, la ville indienne où il vit. Pico Iyer, journaliste et écrivain, possède une vision et une clarté intellectuelle qui élève son livre au-delà des clichés qui abondent autour du chef spirituel tibétain. Fruit d''une amitié longue de trente ans entre les deux hommes, ce portrait dévoile la réalité profonde d''un homme d''exception.

Een Engelstalig journalist van Indiase afkomst beschrijft aan de hand van zijn ervaringen in Azië de culturele invloed van het Westen op de mensen daar.

"Mathematics is the art of arranging patterns, literature the science of applying them."--Page [3].

After the immense success of the four previous volumes of Mastermind India, which has become something of an institution among quiz enthusiasts in India, comes the latest volume in the series, containing all the questions from Mastermind India''s fifth and final series. Mastermind India, India''s premier television quiz show hosted by Siddhartha Basu, is the Indian incarnation of Mastermind, the most respected television quiz show in the world. For several years now, the show has kept viewers of BBC World glued to their screens with its depth and range of questions. The book contains eighty-eight formidable sets of general knowledge questions, and over 1800 questions on interesting areas of specialization, ranging from the Nuremberg trials to Fermat''s last theorem, from the history of Intel to the life of Dhirubhai Ambani, and from the film career of Aamir Khan and the cricketing career of the Amarnaths to the Woodstock concert and recipients of the Bharat Ratna. Also included are all the questions from the special Champion of Champions round conducted in the final series of Mastermind India. This is a treasure trove of questions that will test the mettle of the most dedicated quiz enthusiast.