Sometimes Brilliant, Larry Brilliant
Sometimes Brilliant, Larry Brilliant
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Sometimes Brilliant
The Impossible Adventure of a Spiritual Seeker and Visionary Physician Who Helped Conquer the Worst Disease in History

Author: Larry Brilliant

Narrator: Fred Sanders

Unabridged: 12 hr 27 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: HarperAudio

Published: 10/11/2016


Synopsis

When a powerful mystic steps on the hand of a radical young hippie doctor from Detroit, it changes lives and the world. Sometimes Brilliant is the adventures of a philosopher, mystic, hippie, doctor, groundbreaking tech innovator, and key player in the eradication of one of the worst pandemics in human history. His story, of 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 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 killer smallpox. He would never have believed he would become a key player in eliminating a 10,000-year-old disease that killed more than half a billion people in the 20th 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, 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 adventure, 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.

About Larry Brilliant

LARRY BRILLIANT, M.D., M.P.H., is a pioneering physician, visionary technologist, and global philanthropist. The first executive director of Google.org, he currently serves as chairman of Skoll Global Threats Fund. Larry co-founded the The Seva Foundation, whose programs and partners have restored sight to more than 4 million blind in dozens of countries. He has worked with four Presidents, the UN, G8 and Chaired the National Biosurveillance Advisory Subcommittee. He co-founded one of the first digital social networks, the Well. He and his wife Girija and their children live in Northern California.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Sharon on November 09, 2022

Prepare to be transported on an incredible journey! Larry Brilliant weaves a rich, memorable tapestry that combines spirituality, memoir, leadership lessons, the smallpox epidemic, international travel, and hallucinogens throughout the past four decades. Brilliant was a hippie who participated in non......more

Goodreads review by Upanshu on August 22, 2020

Agreed Smallpox is no longer “the worst disease”, my motive of reading this book were many: 1. Psychological peace that there would be a day when Corona would be finished too. 2. Why was India among the last nations to eradicate smallpox? Was India not so advanced then, or political reasons? 3. Lastly,......more

Goodreads review by Rosemarie on August 17, 2021

Very inspirational, educational and certainly entertaining, especially the hippie era adventures. Free spirited and curious, Dr. Larry Brilliant and his wife are “called” on a mission to cure smallpox in India, the last bastion to have access to and acceptance of the vaccine. Such non-traditional pa......more

Goodreads review by Viji on September 20, 2016

Got to hear the author in person. Funny, Creative and Inspiring......more

Goodreads review by Al on November 22, 2016

Sometimes Brilliant is the story of Larry Brilliant and his sometimes mystic, always interesting path as a hippie who fully embraced sex, drugs and rock and roll towards helping eradicate smallpox in India, which was the last bastion of this terrible disease that had killed and maimed hundreds of mi......more