Download or read book The Geography of Bliss written by Eric Weiner and published by Random House. This book was released on 2014-10-30 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What makes a nation happy? Is one country's sense of happiness the same as another's? In the last two decades, psychologists and economists have learned a lot about who's happy and who isn't. The Dutch are, the Romanians aren't, and Americans are somewhere in between... After years of going to the world's least happy countries, Eric Weiner, a veteran foreign correspondent, decided to travel and evaluate each country's different sense of happiness and discover the nation that seemed happiest of all. ·He discovers the relationship between money and happiness in tiny and extremely wealthy Qatar (and it's not a good one) ·He goes to Thailand, and finds that not thinking is a contented way of life. ·He goes to the tiny Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan, and discovers they have an official policy of Gross National Happiness! ·He asks himself why the British don't do happiness? In Weiner's quest to find the world's happiest places, he eats rotten Icelandic shark, meditates in Bangalore, visits strip clubs in Bangkok and drinks himself into a stupor in Reykjavik. Full of inspired moments, The Geography of Bliss accomplishes a feat few travel books dare and even fewer achieve: to make you happier.
Download or read book The Geography of Genius written by Eric Weiner and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2016-01-05 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tag along on this New York Times bestselling “witty, entertaining romp” (The New York Times Book Review) as Eric Weiner travels the world, from Athens to Silicon Valley—and back through history, too—to show how creative genius flourishes in specific places at specific times. In this “intellectual odyssey, traveler’s diary, and comic novel all rolled into one” (Daniel Gilbert, author of Stumbling on Happiness), acclaimed travel writer Weiner sets out to examine the connection between our surroundings and our most innovative ideas. A “superb travel guide: funny, knowledgeable, and self-deprecating” (The Washington Post), he explores the history of places like Vienna of 1900, Renaissance Florence, ancient Athens, Song Dynasty Hangzhou, and Silicon Valley to show how certain urban settings are conducive to ingenuity. With his trademark insightful humor, this “big-hearted humanist” (The Wall Street Journal) walks the same paths as the geniuses who flourished in these settings to see if the spirit of what inspired figures like Socrates, Michelangelo, and Leonardo remains. In these places, Weiner asks, “What was in the air, and can we bottle it?” “Fun and thought provoking” (The Miami Herald), The Geography of Genius reevaluates the importance of culture in nurturing creativity and “offers a practical map for how we can all become a bit more inventive” (Adam Grant, author of Originals).
Download or read book The Socrates Express written by Eric Weiner and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2020-08-25 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The New York Times bestselling author of The Geography of Bliss embarks on a rollicking intellectual journey, following in the footsteps of history’s greatest thinkers and showing us how each—from Epicurus to Gandhi, Thoreau to Beauvoir—offers practical and spiritual lessons for today’s unsettled times. We turn to philosophy for the same reasons we travel: to see the world from a different perspective, to unearth hidden beauty, and to find new ways of being. We want to learn how to embrace wonder. Face regrets. Sustain hope. Eric Weiner combines his twin passions for philosophy and travel in a globe-trotting pilgrimage that uncovers surprising life lessons from great thinkers around the world, from Rousseau to Nietzsche, Confucius to Simone Weil. Traveling by train (the most thoughtful mode of transport), he journeys thousands of miles, making stops in Athens, Delhi, Wyoming, Coney Island, Frankfurt, and points in between to reconnect with philosophy’s original purpose: teaching us how to lead wiser, more meaningful lives. From Socrates and ancient Athens to Beauvoir and 20th-century Paris, Weiner’s chosen philosophers and places provide important practical and spiritual lessons as we navigate today’s chaotic times. In a “delightful” odyssey that “will take you places intellectually and humorously” (San Francisco Book Review), Weiner invites us to voyage alongside him on his life-changing pursuit of wisdom and discovery as he attempts to find answers to our most vital questions. The Socrates Express is “full of valuable lessons…a fun, sharp book that draws readers in with its apparent simplicity and bubble-gum philosophy approach and gradually pulls them in deeper and deeper” (NPR).
Download or read book Man Seeks God written by Eric Weiner and published by Hachette+ORM. This book was released on 2011-12-05 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bestselling author of Geography of Bliss returns with this funny, illuminating chronicle of a globe-spanning spiritual quest to find a faith that fits. When a health scare puts him in the hospital, Eric Weiner-an agnostic by default-finds himself tangling with an unexpected question, posed to him by a well-meaning nurse. "Have you found your God yet?" The thought of it nags him, and prods him-and ultimately launches him on a far-flung journey to do just that. Weiner, a longtime "spiritual voyeur" and inveterate traveler, realizes that while he has been privy to a wide range of religious practices, he's never seriously considered these concepts in his own life. Face to face with his own mortality, and spurred on by the question of what spiritual principles to impart to his young daughter, he decides to correct this omission, undertaking a worldwide exploration of religions and hoping to come, if he can, to a personal understanding of the divine. The journey that results is rich in insight, humor, and heart. Willing to do anything to better understand faith, and to find the god or gods that speak to him, he travels to Nepal, where he meditates with Tibetan lamas and a guy named Wayne. He sojourns to Turkey, where he whirls (not so well, as it turns out) with Sufi dervishes. He heads to China, where he attempts to unblock his chi; to Israel, where he studies Kabbalah, sans Madonna; and to Las Vegas, where he has a close encounter with Raelians (followers of the world's largest UFO-based religion). At each stop along the way, Weiner tackles our most pressing spiritual questions: Where do we come from? What happens when we die? How should we live our lives? Where do all the missing socks go? With his trademark wit and warmth, he leaves no stone unturned. At a time when more Americans than ever are choosing a new faith, and when spiritual questions loom large in the modern age, Man Seeks God presents a perspective on religion that is sure to delight, inspire, and entertain.
Download or read book Love with a Chance of Drowning written by Torre DeRoche and published by Hachette+ORM. This book was released on 2011-08-02 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New love. Exotic destinations. A once-in-a-lifetime adventure. What could go wrong? City girl Torre DeRoche isn't looking for love, but a chance encounter in a San Francisco bar sparks an instant connection with a soulful Argentinean man who unexpectedly sweeps her off her feet. The problem? He's just about to cast the dock lines and voyage around the world on his small sailboat, and Torre is terrified of deep water. However, lovesick Torre determines that to keep the man of her dreams, she must embark on the voyage of her nightmares, so she waves good-bye to dry land and braces for a life-changing journey that's as exhilarating as it is terrifying. Somewhere mid-Pacific, she finds herself battling to keep the old boat, the new relationship, and her floundering sanity afloat. . . . This sometimes hilarious, often harrowing, and always poignant memoir is set against a backdrop of the world's most beautiful and remote destinations. Equal parts love story and travel memoir, Love with a Chance of Drowning is witty, charming, and proof positive that there are some risks worth taking.
Download or read book The Geography of Morals written by Owen J. Flanagan and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 377 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Variations -- On being imprisoned by one's upbringing -- Moral psychologies and moral ecologies -- Bibliographical essay -- First nature -- Classical Chinese sprouts -- Modern moral psychology -- Beyond moral modularity -- Destructive emotions -- Bibliographic essay -- Collisions -- When values collide -- Moral geographies of anger -- Weird anger -- For love's and justice's sake -- Bibliographical essay -- Anthropologies -- Self-variations: philosophical archaeologies -- The content of character.
Download or read book Low Tide on Grand Pr written by Bliss Carman and published by . This book was released on 1894 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Happiness written by Daniel Nettle and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2005-05-12 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What exactly is happiness? Can we measure it? Why are some people happy and others not? And is there a drug that could eliminate all unhappiness? People all over the world, and throughout the ages, have thought about happiness, argued about its nature, and, most of all, desired it. But why do we have such a strong instinct to pursue happiness? And if happiness is good in itself, why haven't we simply evolved to be happier? Daniel Nettle uses the results of the latest psychological studies to ask what makes people happy and unhappy, what happiness really is, and to examine our urge to achieve it. Along the way we look at brain systems, at mind-altering drugs, and how happiness is now marketed to us as a commodity. Nettle concludes that while it may be unrealistic to expect lasting happiness, our evolved tendency to seek happiness drives us to achieve much that is worthwhile in itself. What is more, it seems to be not your particular circumstances that define whether you are happy so much as your attitude towards life. Happiness gives us the latest scientific insights into the nature of our feelings of well-being, and what these imply for how we might live our lives.
Download or read book Blunder written by Zachary Shore and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2010-07-15 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For anyone whose best-laid plans have been foiled by faulty thinking, Blunder reveals how understanding seven simple traps-Exposure Anxiety, Causefusion, Flat View, Cure-Allism, Infomania, Mirror Imaging, Static Cling-can make us all less apt to err in our daily lives.
Download or read book Anything You Want written by Derek Sivers and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2015-09-15 with total page 98 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: You can follow the beaten path and call yourself an entrepreneur or you can blaze your own trail and really be one. When Derek Sivers started CD Baby, he wasn’t planning on building a major business. He was a successful independent musician who just wanted to sell his CDs online. When no one would help him do it, he set out on his own and built an online store from scratch. He started in 1998 by helping his friends sell their CDs. In 2000, he hired his first employee. Eight years later, he sold CD Baby for $22 million. Sivers didn’t need a business plan, and neither do you. You don’t need to think big; in fact, it’s better if you don’t. Start with what you have, care about your customers more than yourself, and run your business like you don’t need the money.
Download or read book Life Reimagined written by Barbara Bradley Hagerty and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2016-03-15 with total page 395 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A dynamic and inspiring exploration of the new science that is redrawing the future for people in their forties, fifties, and sixties for the better—and for good. There’s no such thing as an inevitable midlife crisis, Barbara Bradley Hagerty writes in this provocative, hopeful book. It’s a myth, an illusion. New scientific research explodes the fable that midlife is a time when things start to go downhill for everybody. In fact, midlife can be a great new adventure, when you can embrace fresh possibilities, purposes, and pleasures. In Life Reimagined, Hagerty explains that midlife is about renewal: It’s the time to renegotiate your purpose, refocus your relationships, and transform the way you think about the world and yourself. Drawing from emerging information in neurology, psychology, biology, genetics, and sociology—as well as her own story of midlife transformation—Hagerty redraws the map for people in midlife and plots a new course forward in understanding our health, our relationships, even our futures.
Download or read book The Shadow Market written by Eric J. Weiner and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2011-10-11 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Argues that sovereign wealth funds and rogue nations are threatening the security of America's financial future, explaining how they undermine the economy and the stability of banking institutions.
Download or read book Place Meaning and Attachment written by Dak Kopec and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-03-10 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Revolutions have gripped many countries, leading to the destruction of buildings, places, and artifacts; climate change is threatening the ancestral homes of many, the increasingly uneven distribution of resources has made the poor vulnerable to the coercive efforts by the rich, and social uncertainty has led to the romanticizing of the past. Humanity is resilient, but we have a fundamental need for attachment to places, buildings, and objects. This edited volume will explore the different meanings and forms of place attachment and meaning based on our histories and conceptualization of material artifacts. Each chapter examines a varied relationship between a given society and the meaning formed through myth, symbols, and ideologies manifested through diverse forms of material artifacts. Topics of consideration examine place attachment at many scales including at the level of the artifact, human being, building, urban context, and region. We need a better understanding of human relationships to the past, our attachments to the events and places, and to the external influences on our attachments. This understanding will allow for better preservation methods pertaining to important places and buildings, and enhanced social wellbeing for all groups of people. Covering a broad range of international perspectives on place meaning from the United States to Europe, Asia to Russia, and Africa to Australia, this book is an essential read for students, academics, and professionals alike.
Download or read book Nightfall written by Jake Halpern and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2015-09-22 with total page 373 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The dark will bring your worst nightmares to light in this gripping and eerie survival story! On Marin’s island, sunrise doesn’t come every twenty-four hours—it comes every twenty-eight years. Now the sun is just a sliver of light on the horizon. The weather is turning cold and the shadows are growing long. Because sunset triggers the tide to roll out hundreds of miles, the islanders are frantically preparing to sail south, where they will wait out the long Night. Marin and her twin brother, Kana, help their anxious parents ready the house for departure. Locks must be taken off doors. Furniture must be arranged. Tables must be set. The rituals are puzzling—bizarre, even—but none of the adults in town will discuss why it has to be done this way. Just as the ships are about to sail, a teenage boy goes missing—the twins’ friend Line. Marin and Kana are the only ones who know the truth about where Line’s gone, and the only way to rescue him is by doing it themselves. But Night is falling. Their island is changing. And it may already be too late.
Download or read book The Essence of Happiness written by Dalai Lama and published by Penguin. This book was released on 1998-10-26 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The essence of the iconic book The Art of Happiness distilled into a beautiful new format. The Dalai Lama inspired millions around the world with his wisdom and compassion in The Art of Happiness. Now, in The Essence of Happiness, moving insights from His Holiness are gathered in an elegantly designed keepsake book that makes for a handy and accessible medium for that wisdom. Offering sage advice on defeating day-to-day depression, anxiety, anger, jealousy, and other emotions that get in the way of true happiness, the pages of The Essence of Happiness contain transforming reflections on how to overcome suffering and obstacles to create a fulfilled, joyous life. With its new package, ideal for taking anywhere, The Essence of Happiness is poised to become the handbook for living.
Download or read book Reality and Its Structure written by Ricki Bliss and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reality is a rather large place. It contains protons, economies, headaches, sentences, smiles, asteroids, crimes, numbers, and very many other things. Much of the content of our reality appears to depend on other of its content. Economies, for example, appear to depend upon people and the way they behave, amongst other things. Some of the content of our reality also appears to be, in some significant sense, more important than other of its content. Whilst none of us would wish to deny the very important role that economies play in our lives, most of us would agree that without matter arranged certain ways in space, for example, there could be no economies in the first place. Very many contemporary philosophers are concerned with how exactly we are to fill in the details of this view. What they are inclined to agree on is that reality has an over-arching hierarchical structure ordered by relations of metaphysical dependence, where chains of entities ordered by those dependence relations terminate in something fundamental. It is also commonly taken for granted that what those dependence chains terminate in is merely contingently existent - those things could have failed to exist - and consistent - they have no contradictory properties. This volume brings together fifteen essays from leading and emerging scholars that address these core, yet often under-explored, commitments.
Download or read book The Vagabond s Way written by Rolf Potts and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2023-10-03 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Thought-provoking, encouraging, and inspiring” (Gretchen Rubin) reflections on the power of travel to transform our daily lives—from the iconoclastic travel writer, scholar, and author of Vagabonding For readers who dream of travel, yearn to get back out on the road, or want to enrich a journey they’re currently on, The Vagabond’s Way explores and celebrates the life-altering essence of travel all year long. Each day of the year features a meditation on an aspect of the journey, anchored by words of wisdom from a variety of thinkers—from Stoic philosopher Seneca and poet Maya Angelou to Trappist monk Thomas Merton and Grover from Sesame Street. Iconoclastic travel writer and scholar Rolf Potts embraces the ragged-edged, harder-to-quantify aspects of travel that inevitably change travelers’ lives for the better in unexpected ways. The book’s various sections mirror the phases of a trip, including • dreaming and planning the journey: “All life-affecting journeys—and the unexpected wonders they promise—become real the moment you decide they will happen.” • embracing the rhythms of the journey: “The most poignant experiences on the road occur in those quiet moments when we recognize beauty in the ordinary.” • finding richer travel experiences: “Developing an instinct to venture beyond the obvious on the road allows you to see places as mysteries to be investigated.” • expanding your comfort zone: “No moment of instant gratification can compare to savoring an experience that has been earned by enduring the adversity that comes with it.” The Vagabond’s Way encourages you to sustain the mindset of a journey, even when you aren’t able to travel, and affirms that travel is as much a way of being as it is an act of movement.
