An acclaimed travel writer examines the connection between surroundings and innovative ideas, profiling examples in such regions as early-twentieth-century Vienna, Renaissance Florence, ancient Athens, and Silicon Valley. --Publisher
After a health scare, an atheist travels the world searching for an experience of the divine, from meditating with Tibetan lamas in Nepal and unblocking his chi in China, to studying the Kabbalah in Israel.
Retraces the journeys of forefront intellectuals from Epicurus and Gandhi to Thoreau and Beauvoir to illuminate how their practical and spiritual lessons can be applied in today's unsettled world.