Los angeles times pico iyer

And we travel, in essence, to become young fools again—to slow time down and get taken in, and fall in love once more. From the acclaimed author of The Art of Stillness- -one of our most engaging and discerning travel writers—a unique, indispensable guide to the enigma of contemporary Japan. After thirty-two years in Japan, Pico Iyer can use everything from anime to Oscar Wilde to show how his adopted home is both hauntingly familiar and the strangest place on earth.

He draws on readings, reflections, and conversations with Japanese friends to illuminate an unknown place for newcomers, and to give longtime residents a look at their home through fresh eyes. Video will be posted soon. Chris Anderson is the curator of TED. Trained as a journalist after graduating from Oxford University, Anderson launched a number of successful magazines before turning his attention to TED, which he and his nonprofit acquired in He has nurtured, coaxed, and encouraged so many speakers over the years myself included — helping us to bring forth our very best performances onstage, even when we were at our most nervous and overwhelmed.

He is the absolutely perfect person to have written this book, and it will be a gift to many. Since taking over TED in the early s, Chris Anderson has shown how carefully crafted short talks can be the key to unlocking empathy, stirring excitement, spreading knowledge, and promoting a shared dream. Done right, a talk is more powerful than anything in written form. The Official TED Guide to Public Speaking explains how the miracle of powerful public speaking is achieved, and equips you to give it your best shot.

Business Visionaries. Hot Property. Times Events. Times Store. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options. Illustration of author Pico Iyer. Inside the halls, meanwhile, are wide-ranging chats that honor L. Yet, crucially and essentially, the festival is an outdoors celebration in the usually stainless mid-April sunshine, where for once Baldwin Park and South Central and Brentwood and Van Nuys seem to come together.

I watched newcomers from Iran, Guatemala, Tibet and China stream into the arrivals hall, only to head out into the daylight and get into cars. And from inside those cars, Koreatown hardly seemed to touch Santa Ana, and Compton and Thai Town belonged to parallel universes. A few months later, at the festival, I saw everyone released from their vehicles and mingling all around me, freeing me at last from the latest L.

Colors run. This might not be a coincidence. In my 20s, I used to haunt Dead concerts again and again, not for the music but for a sense of community. Suddenly one was off the freeway and out of the office and in some alternative universe in which people were smiling and things were given away for free and we all had the happily woozy sensation of loving something together.

My first week of working in Midtown Manhattan, I hurried to catch the Dead at Madison Square Garden; around me were all the same tunes — all the same fans — but somehow the magic of the Ventura Country Fairgrounds was gone. That — or, rather, its seeming absence — lay at the heart of all our cheap jibes about Los Angeles from afar. How could one begin to have a real city scattered across a county more populous than North Carolina and, in fact, 40 other American states , in which everyone was nosing along those crisscrossing freeways?

A city based on mobility is not known for constancy. For everyone within miles or more, the Festival of Books is a joy precisely because it has so quickly become such a rich and solid tradition. And as some of us return, year after year, it becomes a very human and specific community too.

The festival has given me a new friend in Marc, who brings his high school English classes there. Nora, whom I met while I was signing a book of hers, invites me to her Saturday evening party every festival, a lead-up to her Cuban pig roast on Memorial Day.

I even get to see my Santa Barbara neighbor T. There are many reasons to read, and the ones I learned about while studying literature in grad school speak for only a few. Books put us inside the shoes, the skin, the soul of the Other, something ever more important in our violently polarized times.

With his keen-eyed observations, bestselling writer Pico Iyer is a chronicler of the desire to seek new frontiers and view familiar terrain through fresh eyes. Iyer has been embraced by both spiritual seekers and startup entrepreneurs as a beacon of wisdom in a frenetic world.

Video Night in Kathmandu chronicled his explorations across ten countries in Asia and the way these lands have been affected—or not—by the influence of Western culture. In his subsequent travel writing, Iyer continues to meditate on the intensifying criss-crossings between East and West, past and present, projection and reality. Iyer has given four popular TED Talks over the past decade, which together earned nearly eleven million views. They present new perspectives on longing and belonging, wisdom, and our place in the busy world.

His book The Art of Stillness and accompanying TED Talk speak to the need to open up space in our crowded lives and remember what we care about most. Autumn Light: Season of Fire and Farewells is a far-reaching meditation on impermanence, mortality, and grief seeded in his part-time home of Japan, a country whose calendar is marked with occasions honoring the dead.

For nearly five decades, Iyer has spent weeks at a time talking and traveling with the XIVth Dalai Lama: eating lunch with the Tibetan leader every day; attending all of his public engagements; and sitting in on his private audiences with old friends, religious leaders, political strategists, and scientists. His books have been translated into 23 languages, and he has written liner notes for Leonard Cohen, a film script for Miramax, a libretto for a chamber orchestra, and the introductions to more than 60 other works.

A regular essayist for more than a quarter-century for Time, The New York Times, National Geographic, Conde Nast Traveler and more than other periodicals worldwide, Iyer has reported extensively from more than 45 countries.