After a 1990 wildfire destroyed his home and possessions, Iyer started over. The loss led him to a Benedictine monastery, where he found comfort and compassion in solitude. His new memoir is Aflame.

How to Listen. For decades, starting in 1991 after his house in Santa Barbara burned to the ground, the travel writer and essayist Pico Iyer

These days, I can’t stop thinking about the hazy morning in June 1990, when I walked all the way up our narrow mountain road in Santa Barbara, Calif., past exhausted firemen, past houses reduced to cinders and the skeletons of abandoned cars, until I reached the spot in the hills where our home was a pile of debris.

Pico Iyer, in Aflame, reflects on solitude, gratitude, the necessity of silence, and interconnectedness, promoting a compassionate approach to life.

Pico Iyer has visited a small, Benedictine hermitage in California more than 100 times in the last 30 years. He isn't religious, but his life has been transformed by these times spent in silence.

Southern California families who have lost everything the in recent wildfires are reckoning with what it means to start over. Writer Pico Iyer's eerily timed memoir, Aflame: Learning from Silence ...

Luck, like most general managers, is largely responsible for securing money and signing players, many of whom announce they wish to change schools by entering the sport’s so-called transfer portal.

Ah, but — and you should remember this for “Jeopardy!” — the Golden State’s first documented gold strike happened here, in Newhall, in 1842, six years before gold gleamed in the hurrying waters of Sutter’s Mill.

The Southern California Independent Bookstore Bestsellers list for Sunday, Jan. 26, 2025, including hardcover and paperback fiction and nonfiction.

See the top-selling releases among hardcover fiction and nonfiction, plus trade and mass market paperbacks for the sales week that ended Jan. 19.

This week: Years ago, writer Pico Iyer lost everything in a wildfire. This is what he learned: After a 1990 wildfire destroyed his home and possessions, Iyer started over. The loss led him to a ...

LOS ANGELES – Southern California braces for a ferocious return of fire danger as the National Weather Service issues its most urgent warning for extreme fire weather. Destructive Santa Ana ...