Books published by HARPER COLLINS

When a powerful mystic steps on the hand of a radical young hippie doctor from Detroit, it changes lives and the world. Sometimes Brilliant chronicles the adventures of a philosopher, seeker, unconventional doctor, groundbreaking tech innovator, and key player in the eradication of one of the worst pandemics in human history. His story--about what happens when love, compassion, and determination meet the right circumstances to effect positive change--is the kind that keeps hope and the sense of possibility alive.After sitting at the feet of Martin Luther King Jr. at the University of Michigan in 1963, Larry Brilliant was swept up into the civil rights movement, marching and protesting across America and Europe. As a radical young doctor, he followed the Hippie Trail from London over the Khyber Pass with his wife Girija, Wavy Gravy, and the Hog Farm commune to India. There, he found himself in a Himalayan ashram wondering whether he had stumbled into a cult. Instead, one of India's greatest spiritual teachers, Neem Karoli Baba, opened Larry's heart and told him his destiny was to work for the World Health Organization to help eradicate deadly smallpox. He never would have believed he'd become a key player in eliminating a ten-thousand-year-old disease that killed more than half a billion people in the twentieth century alone.Brilliant's unlikely trajectory, chronicled in Sometimes Brilliant, has brought him into close proximity with political leaders, spiritual masters, cultural heroes, and titans of technology around the world--from the Grateful Dead to Mikhail Gorbachev, from Ram Dass, the Dalai Lama, Lama Govinda, and Karmapa to Steve Jobs and the founders of Google, Salesforce, Facebook, Microsoft, and eBay, and Presidents Carter, Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama. Anchored by the engrossing account of the heroic efforts of the extraordinary people involved in smallpox eradication in India, this is a riveting and fascinating epidemiological expedition, an honest reckoning of an entire generation, and a deeply moving spiritual memoir. It is a testament to faith, love, service, and what it means to engage with life's most important questions in pursuit of a better, more brilliant existence.

First published in 2001 to national acclaim, Notes on a Beermat is Nicholas Pashley's ode to the amber nectar of the gods, a witty meditation on beer and everything that goes with it-from socializing to the solitary pleasures of a beer and a book, to the qualities necessary in a good pub.    Most books about beer focus on the beverage itself, how to make it and how to buy it. Notes on a Beermat, the only Canadian book of its kind, explains how to drink beer and why it is absolutely necessary. With characteristic wit and charm, Pashley observes, for example, that "to ensure a steady and regular supply of beer, it was necessary to cultivate grain. This in turn transformed early man from the hunter-gatherer to the agriculturist. Even then, beer was making people smarter."    Whether you're out for an after-work drink with colleagues or you're looking for a seat at your favourite watering hole, Pashley is your guide. His stories about searching for the perfect pub, the best time of day to drink beer and the silliest pub conversation he's ever had will leave you laughing into your pint. So this fellow walks into a bar, right? Then he walks into another bar. And yet another bar. Repeat this action for 35 years. And that's how this book got written. . . .    This is a book about drinking. Now, we've seen a number of books about drinking in recent years, most of them telling either sad or inspirational stories about the perils of alcohol and the overcoming thereof.    This is not one of those books.-From Notes on a Beermat