Welcome
Greetings. I’m glad you found your way here, no matter how circuitous the journey. Actually, I’m a big fan of wandering, and have been doing it all my life. I’m a former foreign correspondent for NPR, a philosophical traveler—and recovering malcontent. That restless spirit is reflected in my two books: The Geography of Bliss: One Grump’s Search for the Happiest Places in the World and Man Seeks God: My Flirtations with the Divine. You can read more about them here, and even listen to an audio excerpt. You can also sample my other writing, and see a calendar of my upcoming readings and appearances. So much wandering to do!
On PBS NewsHour
“Books about God tend to fall into two categories: objective inquiries into the nature of belief and personal tales of spiritual awakening…[Weiner] nimbly and often hilariously straddles the fence between the two genres….He’s Woody Allen channeling Karen Armstrong.”
-on Man Seeks God
“[Weiner's] sophisticated wit and wordplay yield an engaging tale at each stop.”
-on Man Seeks God
“Well-researched, informative and engaging, “Man Seeks God” is packed with facts and wisdom.”
“Weiner, equal parts philosopher, travel guide, and self-help expert—and wholly hilarious—has written a book you can delight in.”
—on The Geography of Bliss
Speaking at TEDx
Receiving a Blessing in Kathmandu
“Throughout this marvelously entertaining journey, precious and universal truths emerge amid the churning of Weiner’s self-conscious intellect and self deprecating sense of humor. Weiner manages to suspend disbelief long enough to share tales of divine wonders, a possibility in all of us.”
—on Man Seeks God (starred review)
On The Colbert Report
Man Seeks God: My Flirtations with the Divine
On Sale Now!
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 justhat. 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: One Grump’s Search for the Happiest Places in the World
Now in Paperback
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…
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