Ben & Me
Ben Franklin lingers in our lives and in our imaginations. One of only two non-presidents to appear on US currency, Franklin was a founder, statesman, scientist, inventor, diplomat, publisher, humorist, and philosopher. He believed in the American experiment, but Ben Franklin’s greatest experiment was…Ben Franklin. In that spirit of betterment, Eric Weiner embarks on an ambitious quest to live the way Ben lived.
Not a conventional biography, Ben & Me is a guide to living and thinking well, as Ben Franklin did. It is also about curiosity, diligence, and, most of all, the elusive goal of self-improvement. As Weiner follows Franklin from Philadelphia to Paris, Boston to London, he attempts to uncover Ben’s life lessons, large and small. We learn how to improve a relationship with someone by inducing them to do a favor for you—a psychological phenomenon now known as The Ben Franklin Effect. We learn about the printing press (the Internet of its day), early medicine, diplomatic intrigue and, of course, electricity. And we learn about ethics, persuasion, humor, regret, appetite, and so much more. Read more…
The Socrates Express
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. Read more…
Man Seeks God
Man Seeks God came about after a health scare landed me in the hospital. I was in pain, awaiting a diagnosis, when a well-meaning nurse asks me a simple, blunt question: “Have you found your God yet?” This out-of-the-blue query nags, prods, and ultimately launches me on a far-flung journey to do just that. And so I am off, searching the globe for a faith that fits.
For most of my life, I have been a “spiritual voyeur,” privy to a wide range of religious practices, but never seriously considered these concepts in my own life. I was an agnostic by default. Face to face with my own mortality, though, and spurred on by the question of what spiritual principles to impart to my young daughter, I decide to correct this omission, undertaking a worldwide exploration of religions and hoping to come to a personal understanding of the divine. In other words, I wanted to answer the nurse’s question. Read more…
The Geography of Bliss
The Geography of Bliss is a tough book to nail down. It defies categorization. I like to think of it as a philosophical humorous travel memoir. It is all of those things, and more.
For years, as a foreign correspondent for National Public Radio, I covered a multitude of catastrophes, natural and man-made. But for The Geography of Bliss, I decided to tell the other side of the story by visiting some of the world’s most contented places.
Using the ancient philosophers and the much more recent “science of happiness” as my guide, I travel the world in search of the happiest places and what we can learn from them. As I make my way from Iceland (one of the world’s happiest countries) to Bhutan (where the king has made Gross National Happiness a national priority) to Moldova (not a happy place), I calls upon the collective wisdom of “the self-help industrial complex” to help him navigate the path to contentment. Read more…