Peter Matthiessen

Pico Iyer

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

Arizona

An unforgettable spiritual journey through the Himalayas by renowned writer Peter Matthiessen (1927-2014), the National Book Award-winning author of the new novel In Paradise 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 understanding of reality, suffering, impermanence, and beauty. This Penguin Classics edition features an introduction by acclaimed travel writer and novelist Pico Iyer. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

The Snow Leopard

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California

New York

A Novel

Having captivated readers with such gems of travel writing as Video Night in Kathmandu, Pico Iyer now presents a novel whose central character is another place: the melancholy, ebullient, and dazzlingly inconsistent island that is Castro's Cuba. "On almost every page you can smell the dust, the cheap perfume and the rum of Havana today, or better still, tonight."--Los Angeles Times.

Cuba and the Night

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Arto Paasilinna

Charming tale about a man on a roadtrip with a rabbit. As a rabbit owner myself, I totally got a kick out this book. Super fun read.

An internationally bestselling comic novel in which a man--with the help of a bunny--suddenly realizes what's important in life

"Escapism at its best . . . Just pure fun." --NPR.org

"Which of us has not had that wonderfully seditious idea: to play hooky for a while from life as we know it?" With these words from his foreword, Pico Iyer puts his finger on the exhilaratingly anarchic appeal of The Year of the Hare, a novel in the bestselling tradition of Watership Down, Jonathan Livingston Seagull, and Life of Pi.

While out on assignment, a journalist hits a hare with his car. This small incident becomes life-changing: he decides to quit his job, leave his wife, sell his possessions, and spend a year wandering the wilds of Finland--with the bunny as his boon companion.

What ensues is a series of comic misadventures, as everywhere they go--whether chased up a tree by dogs, or to a formal state dinner, or in pursuit of a bear across the Finnish border with Russia--they leave mayhem (and laughter!) in their wake.

The Year of the Hare

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And Other Reports from the Not-So-Far East

Mohawk hair-cuts in Bali, yuppies in Hong Kong and Rambo rip-offs in the movie houses of Bombay are just a few of the jarring images that Iyer brings back from the Far East.

Video Night in Kathmandu

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There is an address label on the inside of the front cover and on the inside flap of the dust jacket.

Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

Utah

Four Seasons in Kyoto

With the same lightness of touch that made his widely-praised Video Night in Kathmandu so captivating, Iyer now tells the story of The Lady and the Monk. Pretty, in her early 30s, and a typically bourgeoise Japanese housewife, Sachiko is locked into her arranged life--and yet utterly fascinated by the West. What happens when the tea ceremony and rock music cross paths is the focus of this delightful novel, which evokes both the old and the very new Japan.

The Lady and the Monk

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First Edition 
The book is in excellent condition with firm binding and clean pages. There are no markings. The dust jacket has minor wear.

~ "When Pico Iyer decided to go to Kyoto and live in a monastery, he did so to learn about Zen Buddhism from the inside, to get to know Kyoto, one of the loveliest old cities in the world, and to find out something about Japanese culture today -- not the world of businessmen and production lines, but the traditional world of changing seasons and the silence of temples, of the images woven through literature, of the lunar Japan that still lives on behind the rising sun of geopolitical power.

All this he did. And then he met Sachiko.

Vivacious, attractive, thoroughly educated, speaking English enthusiastically if eccentrically, the wife of a Japanese "salaryman" who seldom left the office before 10 P.M., Sachiko was as conversant with tea ceremony and classical Japanese literature as with rock music, Goethe, and Vivaldi. With the lightness of touch that made Video Night in Kathmandu so captivating, Pico Iyer fashions from their relationship a marvelously ironic yet heartfelt book that is at once a portrait of cross-cultural infatuation -- and misunderstanding -- and a delightfully fresh way of seeing both the old Japan and the very new."


New Mexico

The Lady and the Monk : Four Seasons in Kyoto

Essays from Several Directions

In Tropical Classical the author of Video Nights in Katmandu and The Lady and the Monk visits a holy city in Ethiopia, where hooded worshippers practice a Christianity that has remained unchanged since the Middle Ages. He follows the bewilderingly complex route of Bombay's dabbawallahs, who each day ferry 100,000 different lunches to 100,000 different workers. Iyer chats with the Dalai Lama and assesses the books of Salman Rushdie and Cormac McCarthy. And he brings his perceptive eye and unflappable wit to bear on the postmodern vogues for literary puffery, sexual gamesmanship, and frequent-flier miles. Glittering with aphorisms, overflowing with insight, and often hilarious, Tropical Classical represents some of Iyer's finest work.

Tropical Classical

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Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

Idaho

Adventures in Going Nowhere

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 might a lifelong traveler like Pico Iyer, who has journeyed from Easter Island to Ethiopia, Cuba to Kathmandu, think that sitting quietly in a room might be the ultimate adventure? Because in our madly accelerating world, our lives are crowded, chaotic and noisy. There's never been a greater need to slow down, tune out and give ourselves permission to be still.

In The Art of Stillness--a TED Books release--Iyer investigate the lives of people who have made a life seeking stillness: from Matthieu Ricard, a Frenchman with a PhD in molecular biology who left a promising scientific career to become a Tibetan monk, to revered singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen, who traded the pleasures of the senses for several years of living the near-silent life of meditation as a Zen monk. Iyer also draws on his own experiences as a travel writer to explore why advances in technology are making us more likely to retreat. He reflects that this is perhaps the reason why many people--even those with no religious commitment--seem to be turning to yoga, or meditation, or seeking silent retreats. These aren't New Age fads so much as ways to rediscover the wisdom of an earlier age. Growing trends like observing an "Internet Sabbath"--turning off online connections from Friday night to Monday morning--highlight how increasingly desperate many of us are to unplug and bring stillness into our lives.

The Art of Stillness paints a picture of why so many--from Marcel Proust to Mahatma Gandhi to Emily Dickinson--have found richness in stillness. Ultimately, Iyer shows that, in this age of constant movement and connectedness, perhaps staying in one place is a more exciting prospect, and a greater necessity than ever before.

In 2013, Pico Iyer gave a blockbuster TED Talk. This lyrical and inspiring book expands on a new idea, offering a way forward for all those feeling affected by the frenetic pace of our modern world.

The Art of Stillness

0c6309ea-ac57-43ca-ad67-abb4e555bc46-1

North Carolina

Don George

Sean Condon

Jan Morris

Danny Wallace

Simon Winchester

Tales of travel, Adventures, with humor and great tales.  

New Hampshire

Humorous Tales of Travel and Misadventure

Presents thirty-one true tales and anecdotes on travel, ranging from close-encounter safaris to adventures found when taking the wrong road, to amusing language and culture barriers from around the world.

By the Seat of My Pants

6138806a-6793-42d4-9ae6-1c6c6655ff11-0

Massachusetts

Paul Relis

Paperback (1 to 2 lbs)

Stories from the Environmental Frontier

In Out of the Wasteland, founding Executive Director of the Community Environmental Council Paul Relis takes us on a journey of the environmental frontier, from the heady days of the birth of environmentalism in Santa Barbara, into the intricate, obfuscated but all important world of government and policy, to important new environmental technologies that can, indeed, free us from this age of oil.

Out of the Wasteland

f758de1b-7199-4cfc-b356-f91173aa75fa

Graham Greene

Colorado

The complete stories of a 20th century master of fiction

Affairs, obsessions, ardors, fantasy, myth, legends, dreams, fear, pity, and violence-this magnificent collection of stories illuminates all corners of the human experience. Including four previously uncollected stories, this new complete edition reveals Graham Greene in a range of contrasting moods, sometimes cynical and witty, sometimes searching and philosophical. Each of these forty-nine stories confirms V. S. Pritchett's declaration that Greene is "a master of storytelling."This Penguin Classics edition features an introduction by Pico Iyer.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Complete Short Stories

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One of the most acclaimed and perceptive observers of globalism and Buddhism now gives us the first serious consideration—for Buddhist and non-Buddhist alike—of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama’s work and ideas as a politician, scientist, and philosopher.

Pico Iyer has been engaged in conversation with the Dalai Lama (a friend of his father’s) for the last three decades—an ongoing exploration of his message and its effectiveness. Now, in this insightful, impassioned book, Iyer captures the paradoxes of the Dalai Lama’s position: though he has brought the ideas of Tibet to world attention, Tibet itself is being remade as a Chinese province; though he was born in one of the remotest, least developed places on earth, he has become a champion of globalism and technology. He is a religious leader who warns against being needlessly distracted by religion; a Tibetan head of state who suggests that exile from Tibet can be an opportunity; an incarnation of a Tibetan god who stresses his everyday humanity.

Moving from Dharamsala, India—the seat of the Tibetan government-in-exile—to Lhasa, Tibet, to venues in the West, where the Dalai Lama’s pragmatism, rigor, and scholarship are sometimes lost on an audience yearning for mystical visions, The Open Road illuminates the hidden life, the transforming ideas, and the daily challenges of a global icon.


Texas

The Global Journey of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama

One of the most acclaimed and perceptive observers of globalism and Buddhism now gives us the first serious consideration--for Buddhist and non-Buddhist alike--of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama's work and ideas as a politician, scientist, and philosopher.

Pico Iyer has been engaged in conversation with the Dalai Lama (a friend of his father's) for the last three decades--an ongoing exploration of his message and its effectiveness. Now, in this insightful, impassioned book, Iyer captures the paradoxes of the Dalai Lama's position: though he has brought the ideas of Tibet to world attention, Tibet itself is being remade as a Chinese province; though he was born in one of the remotest, least developed places on earth, he has become a champion of globalism and technology. He is a religious leader who warns against being needlessly distracted by religion; a Tibetan head of state who suggests that exile from Tibet can be an opportunity; an incarnation of a Tibetan god who stresses his everyday humanity.

Moving from Dharamsala, India--the seat of the Tibetan government-in-exile--to Lhasa, Tibet, to venues in the West, where the Dalai Lama's pragmatism, rigor, and scholarship are sometimes lost on an audience yearning for mystical visions, The Open Road illuminates the hidden life, the transforming ideas, and the daily challenges of a global icon.

The Open Road - First Edition 

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Season of Fire and Farewells

Returning to his longtime home in Japan after his father-in-law's sudden death, Pico Iyer picks up the steadying patterns of his everyday rites: going to the post office and engaging in furious games of ping-pong every evening. But in a country whose calendar is marked with occasions honoring the dead, he comes to reflect on changelessness in ways that anyone can relate to: parents age, children scatter, and Iyer and his wife turn to whatever can sustain them as everything falls away. As the maple leaves begin to turn and the heat begins to soften, Iyer shows us a Japan we have seldom seen before, where the transparent and the mysterious are held in a delicate balance, and where autumn reminds us to take nothing for granted.

Autumn Light

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Hardcover with dust jacket. First edition. LIKE NEW

The Open Road

Virginia

Observations and Provocations

A Beginner's Guide to Japan

e1f65a9c-74f4-4103-a2d9-fc68d83b79a1-0

Washington

The Best Travel Writing of Don George

As a professional travel writer and editor for the past 40 years, Don George has been paid to explore the world. Through the decades, his articles have been published in magazines, newspapers, and websites around the globe and have won more awards than almost any other travel writer alive, yet his pieces have never been collected into one volume. The Way of Wanderlust: The Best Travel Writing of Don George fills this void with a moving and inspiring collection of tales and reflections from one of America's most acclaimed and beloved travel writers.

From his high-spirited account of climbing Mount Kilimanjaro on a whim when he was 22 years old to his heart-plucking description of a home-stay in a muddy compound in Cambodia as a 61-year-old, this collection ranges widely. As renowned for his insightful observations as for his poetic prose, George always absorbs the essence of the places he's visiting.

Other stories here include a moving encounter with Australia's sacred red rock monolith, Uluru; an immersion in country kindness on the Japanese island of Shikoku; the trials and triumphs of ascending Yosemite's Half Dome with his wife and children; and a magical morning at Machu Picchu.



The Way of Wanderlust

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A deeply insightful exploration of the life, work, and global impact of the 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso. The book delves into the Dalai Lama’s complex and demanding journey, both spiritually and politically, as he navigates exile and advocates for peace on a global scale.

Florida

NATIONAL BESTSELLER * For Buddhists and non-Buddhists alike, "an exceptionally intimate portrait" (Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love) of the Dalai Lama--one of the most singular figures of our time.

For over three decades, Pico Iyer, one of our most cherished travel writers, has been a friend to the Dalai Lama. Over these years through intimate conversations, he has come to know him in a way that few can claim. Here he paints an unprecedented portrait of the Dalai Lama, explaining his work and ideas about politics, science, technology, and religion. The Open Road illuminates the hidden life and the daily challenges of this global icon.

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Peter Matthiessen; Pico Iyer

The Snow Leopard

Peter Matthiessen; Pico Iyer

The Snow Leopard

Pico Iyer

Cuba and the Night

Arto Paasilinna; Pico Iyer

The Year of the Hare

Pico Iyer

Video Night in Kathmandu

Arto Paasilinna; Pico Iyer

The Year of the Hare

Pico Iyer

The Lady and the Monk

Pico Iyer

The Lady and the Monk : Four Seasons in Kyoto

Pico Iyer

Tropical Classical

Pico Iyer

The Art of Stillness

Peter Matthiessen; Pico Iyer

The Snow Leopard

Don George; Sean Condon; Pico Iyer; Jan Morris; Danny Wallace; Simon Winchester

By the Seat of My Pants

Arto Paasilinna; Pico Iyer

The Year of the Hare

Paul Relis; Pico Iyer

Out of the Wasteland

Graham Greene; Pico Iyer

Complete Short Stories

Pico Iyer

The Open Road - First Edition

Pico Iyer

Autumn Light

Pico Iyer

The Open Road

Pico Iyer

A Beginner's Guide to Japan

Don George; Pico Iyer

The Way of Wanderlust

Pico Iyer

The Open Road