Tales of Wonder: Adventures Chasing the Divine, an Autobiography
Huston Smith, the man who brought the world's religions to the West, was born almost a century ago to missionary parents in China during the perilous rise of the Communist Party. Smith's lifelong spiritual journey brought him face-to-face with many of the people who shaped the twentieth century. His extraordinary travels around the globe have taken him to the world's holiest places, where he has practiced religion with many of the great spiritual leaders of our time.\ Smith's life is a story...
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Huston Smith, the man who brought the world's religions to the West, was born almost a century ago to missionary parents in China during the perilous rise of the Communist Party. Smith's lifelong spiritual journey brought him face-to-face with many of the people who shaped the twentieth century. His extraordinary travels around the globe have taken him to the world's holiest places, where he has practiced religion with many of the great spiritual leaders of our time. Smith's life is a story of uncanny synchronicity. He was there for pivotal moments in human history such as the founding of the United Nations and the student uprising at Tiananmen Square. As he traveled the world he encountered thinkers who shaped the twentieth century. He interviewed Eleanor Roosevelt on the radio; invited Martin Luther King Jr. to speak at an all-white university before the March on Washington; shared ideas with Thomas Merton on his last plane ride before Merton's death in Bangkok; and was rescued while lost in the Serengeti by Masai warriors who took him to the compound of world-renowned anthropologists Louis and Mary Leaky. In search of intellectual and spiritual treasures, Smith traveled to India to meet with Mother Teresa and befriended the Dalai Lama; he studied Zen at the most challenging monastery in Japan; and he hitchhiked through the desert to meet Aldous Huxley, dropped acid with Timothy Leary, and took peyote with a Native American shaman. He climbed Mount Athos, traipsed through the Holy Land, and was the first to study multiphonic chanting by monks in Tibet, which he recorded with Mickey Hart of the Grateful Dead. Most important, he shared the world's religions with the West—writing two bestselling books and serving as the focus of a five-part PBS television series by Bill Moyers. Huston Smith is a national treasure. His life is an extraordinary adventure, and in his amazing Tales of Wonder, he invites you to come along to explore your own vistas of heart, mind, and soul. The Washington Post - Matthew Shaer Midway through his lush new memoir, the religious scholar Huston Smith pauses to rattle off a list of fond remembrances: dancing among the whirling dervishes in Iran, camping with the Aborigines in Australia, sharing a chuckle with a gaggle of Masai warriors on the darkening Serengeti plains. Each anecdote is offered up with minimum explication and just a few choice adjectives, as if Smith's sense of marvel at the strange bounty of the world should suffice. And in most cases, it does.
\ From Barnes & NobleHuston Smith's experience with world religions began almost at birth: He was born in Soochow, China, in 1919, the son of Methodist missionary parents. He began his career as a college religion professor in the mid-1940s, but from the start, his interest was more than academic: He not only studied but practiced Vedanta Hinduism, Zen Buddhism, and Sufism, each for more than a decade. Tales of Wonder, his autobiography, covers his extraordinarily active and long life. Obviously, Smith is no shut-in; in his book, he describes encounters with Mother Teresa, Aldous Huxley, Reinhold Niebuhr, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Saul Bellow, Eleanor Roosevelt, Martin Luther King Jr., and a host of others.\ \ \ \ \ Matthew ShaerMidway through his lush new memoir, the religious scholar Huston Smith pauses to rattle off a list of fond remembrances: dancing among the whirling dervishes in Iran, camping with the Aborigines in Australia, sharing a chuckle with a gaggle of Masai warriors on the darkening Serengeti plains. Each anecdote is offered up with minimum explication and just a few choice adjectives, as if Smith's sense of marvel at the strange bounty of the world should suffice. And in most cases, it does.\ —The Washington Post\ \ \ Library JournalNearing 90, the author of the classic The World's Religions: Our Great Wisdom Traditions has at last written a memoir. Remarkably brief and humbly written for a man of Smith's fame and accomplishment, Tales deals simply with his life and his encounters with the great and the good (Eleanor Roosevelt, D.T. Suzuki, and Frithjof Schuon, to name a few). Essential for students of religion and highly recommended for others as well.\ \ —Graham Christian\ \ \ \ \ San Francisco Chronicle Book ReviewIn this delightful autobiography, Smith tells us how he became the dean of world religions. Intellectual playfulness is definitely the spirit with which this book was written. Right to his final act, Smith is proving to be the consummate professor, giving us a valuable master class on faith and life.\ \ \ \ \ NewsweekPoignant and readable, Smith recounts professional adventures—meeting Martin Luther King Jr.,befriending Aldous Huxley and the Dalai Lama, dropping acid with Timothy Leary . . . this is what it feels like to have lived a long and interesting life.\ \ \ \ \ Boston Globe"Tales of Wonder brims with fascinating insights and tidbits."\ \ \ \ \ Washington Post Book WorldIn his lush new memoir, the religious scholar Smith dances among the whirling dervishes in Iran, camps with the Aborigines in Australia, shares a chuckle with a gaggle of Masai warriors on the darkening Serengeti plains. Each anecdote reveals Smith’s sense of marvel at the strange bounty of the world\ \ \ \ \ San Jose Mercury NewsSmith . . . [has a gaze that] bespeaks mischief, curiosity, bluntness and wonder . . . In an age of generalized fear and "just say no," Smith, who taught for years at Berkeley, a venerated figure there, has said "yes" to life’s possibilities.\ \ \ \ \ CNN.com"It is the pulse of Smith’s humanity that breathes life into Tales of Wonder."\ \ \ \ \ Pico IyerSmith has long been our clearest and most radiant explorer of all the world’s great religions. Thank heavens for such wisdom, delivered with light and fire!\ \ \ \ \ Bill MoyersOne of our foremost scholars and interpreters of the world’s religions . . . What he has learned, he has applied to life.\ \ \ \ \ Anne LamottMy admiration for Huston Smith’s work is boundless. With each new book I have been astonished, edified, and greatly heartened by his brilliant mind and heart. He is the wisest, sanest religious scholar of them all, and so wonderfully readable.\ \ \ \ \ Jack MilesSmith is America’s best-loved religion tutor.\ \ \ \ \ Thomas MooreHuston Smith is the world’s ambassador to religions everywhere.\ \
