The Path: A New Way to Think About Everything - Softcover

Puett, Professor Michael; Gross-Loh, Christine

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0241970423 ISBN 13: 9780241970423

Publisher: Penguin, 2017

Synopsis

The Sunday Times Top 10 and International Bestseller:
Ancient Chinese philosophy for modern life from Harvard's most popular professor

The first book of its kind, The Path offers a profound guide to living well through making small changes to our everyday routines. Covering subjects from decision-making to relationships, it shows how actions from greeting others and playing with children to running meetings can be opportunities to become happier and more productive.

The authors show that we live well not by "finding" ourselves and slavishly following a grand plan, as so much of Western thought would have us believe, but rather through a path of self-cultivation and engagement with the world. Believing in a "true self" only restricts what we can become - and tiny changes, from how we think about careers to how we talk to our family, can start to have powerful effects that will open up constellations of new possibilities.

Professor Michael Puett's course in Chinese philosophy has taken Harvard by storm. In The Path, he and journalist Christine Gross-Loh make this timeless wisdom accessible to everyone for the first time.

About this title

About the Author

Michael Puett is Professor of Chinese History at Harvard and has lectured widely at the world's leading universities. His course in Chinese philosophy is among the most popular at Harvard and in 2013 he was awarded a Harvard College Professorship for excellence in undergraduate teaching. This is his first trade book. Christine Gross-Loh has written for the Wall Street Journal, the Atlantic and the Huffington Post. She has a PhD in East Asian history from Harvard and is the author of Parenting without Borders.

From the Back Cover

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER In order to 'think big' we must first think small ...The first book of its kind, The Path offers a profound guide to living well. It reveals for the first time how the timeless wisdom of ancient Chinese philosophers can transform the way we think about ourselves. Covering subjects from decision-making to relationships, it shows how making small changes in our everyday routines - as simple as showing weakness in meetings or greeting people differently - can make us happier and more productive. The Path makes this largely unknown body of thought accessible to everyone for the very first time.

From the Inside Flap

The first book of its kind, The Path draws on the work of the great but largely unknown Chinese philosophers to offer a profound guide to living well. By explaining what these teachings reveal about subjects from decision-making to relationships, it challenges some of our deepest held assumptions, forcing us to "unlearn" many ideas that inform modern society. The way we think we're living our lives isn't the way we live them.

The authors show that we live well not by "finding" ourselves and slavishly following a grand plan, as so much of Western thought would have us believe, but rather through a path of self-cultivation and engagement with the world. Believing in a "true self" only restricts what we can become - and tiny changes, from how we think about careers to how we talk with our family, can start to have powerful effects that will open up constellations of new possibilities.

Professor Michael Puett's course in Chinese philosophy has taken Harvard by storm. In The Path, he collaborates with journalist and author Christine Gross-Loh to make this timeless wisdom accessible to everyone for the very first time.

Edition details

• Publisher: Penguin
• Publication date: 2017
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0241970423
• ISBN 13: 9780241970423
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 224