The Ongoing Wisdom of Huston Smith

Lisa Miller of Newsweek has a revealing interview/feature on Huston Smith. The 90 year old religion author-professor has an important new book:  Tales of Wonder: Adventures Chasing the Divine, an Autobiography. The foreword was written by Pico Iyer, whom I referenced in the May 2 blog on Geoff Dyer. (Iyer’s book The Open Road: The Global Journey of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, recently came out in paperback.) Smith is known for his million-selling book The World’s Religions, originally published in 1958 as The Religions of Man.  It was also completely revised and updated when it was renamed in 1991. He was also the subject of a fascinating, five part PBS series in 1996, The Wisdom of Faith, a series of interviews conducted by Bill Moyers. I’ve long considered Smith to be a Peter Drucker-like figure. Both remained relevant and productive deep into old age, were renowned authors, professors and wisdom figures, and were considered to be at the top of their field.  Drucker was also interviewed by Moyers, for a PBS program in 1988, but not as extensively. Smith includes an anecdote about Drucker in the 2001 book Why Religion Matters: The Fate of the Human Spirit in an Age of Disbelief. In addition, there are commonalities in the writing styles of Smith and Drucker: both are clear and compelling, and adept at conveying ideas to wide, diverse readerships. I don’t know if the two knew each other. It’s reasonable to think their paths must have crossed at some point. If anyone has the answer, I’d love to hear about it!