Eric Weiner

Eric Weiner is a prominent speaker and the bestselling author of The Geography of Bliss, Man Seeks God, The Geography of Genius, and The Socrates Express. Weiner's works have been translated into over 20 different languages. He is a former NPR international correspondent and the author of several travel-related and cultural stories. He worked for NPR in New Delhi, Jerusalem, and Tokyo for a decade. He graduated from the University of Maryland and was a Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford University in 2003.

Weiner worked as a business writer for The New York Times from 1989 until 1991. Weiner joined NPR in 1992 and worked in their Washington Bureau until 1994. During his time there, he was assigned tasks with a focus on business and economics. He later became a member of the Foreign Desk. NPR dispatched Weiner to India in 1993, and he became the network's first full-time reporter there. He covered the bubonic plague, India's economic changes, and many other topics during his two-year stay in New Delhi. He received the Angel Award in 1994 for his coverage of Islamic concerns in Asia. From 1995 to 1999, he was located in Jerusalem as NPR's Middle East Correspondent.

He has reported from nearly 30 different nations worldwide. Weiner follows in the footsteps of some of history's greatest philosophers, from Epicurus to Thoreau to Confucius to Simone Weil, as he has written in The Socrates Express: In Search of Life Lessons from Dead philosophers, and provides practical and spiritual lessons for today's uncertain times. Weiner goes from Athens to Silicon Valley and across history in The Geography of Brilliance to demonstrate how creative genius develops in certain places at various periods. Weiner travels around the world in The Geography of Bliss to investigate how different cultures define and pursue pleasure, including Iceland, Bhutan, Moldova, and Qatar. He examines his spiritual restlessness and poses some fundamental issues in Man Seeks God: "What is our origin? What happens to us once we die? What happens to all the lost socks?"

Weiner is a Borders Original Voices Award winner and a Barnes & Noble Discover Award finalist. He was a member of a team that received a Peabody award for investigative reporting on the tobacco business in the United States. In his spare time, he likes to cycle, play tennis, and eat sushi. Weiner is married, and he and his wife have one adopted daughter from Kazakhstan. The family lives in the Washington, DC, area.