Rating: 
Summary: No where near as good as "Video Night in Kathmandu"
Review: I loved "Video Night in Kathmandu". It was one of the best books I have ever read. Iyer's vivid anecdotes in that book allow a reader to know more about the places he visits. Reading that book gave me a real sense of life in many parts of Asia. The anecdotes in "The Global Soul", in contrast, only tell me more about Iyer himself. Too much introspection, too little description. Way too much repetition. "The Global Soul" is an interesting magazine article (which I think I read somewhere) stretched into a very thin book.
Rating: 
Summary: FutureShock, Generation X, and now the next step.
Review: I ran and bought this book after reading an excerpt in a magazine (I can't remember which). I'd never read Iyer before and left the book impressed by a formidable intellect and attention to details. I enjoyed magazine piece better than the book. The book was great for the first 50 or so pages and then bogged down I thought until the last few pages. He seemed to be saying a lot of the same things over and over. I find Iyer does a fantastic job of describing the present world of "disconnectedness". Mind you, I can possibly relate more closesly with this than many readers, sharing a somewhat similar upbringing. The place I thought this book "fell down" was that Iyer and his friends are not "normal, average people", although he says they are. Unless, of course, average people in your world have parents who teach at Oxford, send their kids to the North pole, and your friends make movies with international casts. Had Iyer focussed more on (what I'd call) "normal average" people, it would have been great to see his present views on Quebec separatism in Canada, which he barely scratches and which are likely deeply influenced by a lot of what he describes. Nonetheless, his decription of modern Toronto is refreshing and exciting. It would also have been interesting if he had focused more on the Bangladeshi villager now inundated with western images, the old-guard Torontonian now unable to understand nor read the writing on stores around his neighborhood. A global 2nd hand view of this would have been fascinating and made it a stronger book...in my opinion.
Rating: 
Summary: Pick yourself up off the ground, Pico!
Review: I'm not eager to read a whole lot more by Pico Iyer. He seems very jaded with the world and despairing -- a killjoy for anyone enthusiastic about travel, such as myself. His go-nowhere anecdotes in this book seem like the unbearable whining of a guy who's barking up all the wrong trees looking for happiness. The reason I don't feel for Pico is that a lot of his woes seem to be directly caused by choices he's made. Don't like airports and strip-malls? Bike or walk the world! Find Japan utterly dehumanizing? Learn the language, so you can make some friends there and talk to your wife, for chrissakes! I don't feel for people who set themselves up to be miserable, let alone ones who take it out on the reading public by sowing seeds of despair. For an uplifting look at an Indian Brit who's made the best of his situation and shown a good deal of chutzpah, listen to the group Cornershop!
Rating: 
Summary: What is "home"?
Review: In this book, Pico Iyer examines the concept of "home" and belonging in a world that is increasingly connected. As an Indian wo doesn't speak any Indian languages, as an American who lives on the other side of the Globe, as a man who spends forty days every year in airplanes, and as a man who grew up commuting to school over the North Pole, Pico has a thing or two to say about feeling rootless and without a clear sense of belonging to any place. He does so with wit and a keen eye for detail, relying heavily on other people's comments: there is the REALLY frequent traveller (you know you travel a lot when the airline gives you 30 days free travel on any of their planes), the security guards at the airport ("YOU could be an undercover agent, anybody here could be an undercover agent - there is no way of knowing") and many other memorable characters lovingly brought to life on these pages.
Rating:
Summary: no depth -- reader beware
Review: It's always interesting to read someone else writing about you, or your family, or the place where you live. At best, you might gain insights you would otherwise have overlooked; at worst, you learn how generalizations are made, and how quick, second-hand judgements distort the facts. I've liked much of Iyer's work before, and eagerly read his chapter in The Global Soul on my hometown, Toronto ("The Multiculture".) My heart sank, unfortunately, when old stories were told inaccurately, and current events were misinterpreted in the service of a thesis that, apparently, the writer had no intention of contradicting. The old story of the Christie Pits riots are recalled quickly as a nightmare race riot where "the entire city" violently attacked its Jewish population "at play" in a park. More than a mere exaggeration, it turns an ugly incident from the inter-war years into a cartoon of intolerance that does no service to the fact that a small contingent of anti-Semites and fascists were met with equal resistance from hundreds of Jews (and non-Jews). It's the equivalent of saying that Oswald Mosley instigated the whole of London to attack the Jews of that city. At another point, Iyer identifies Aloyzius Ambrozic as the new Anglican archbishop of the city, in an attempt to make his point that the racial demographics are changing from the WASP hegemony of old to a new, multicultural future. Cardinal Ambrozic, alas, is the Catholic archbishop of the city. (Terence Finlay is the Anglican archbishop of the city and metropolitan of the province -- but it just doesn't make such a good story, though, does it?) According to the acknowledgements, this was information provided by a friend after the fact, but the fact that his friend got it wrong -- and that no fact-checker caught it -- is even more telling, to my eyes. Toronto was never a primarily Anglican city -- Scots Presbyterians had more say in its running during its Victorian era of prosperity -- and the ruling class here was never so monolithically British as Iyer, and many city histories, like to pretend. Today, Catholics -- Italian, Portugese, and Latin-American -- outnumber Anglicans of all nationalities by a huge majority; the fact that Iyer's source knew Ambrozic's name and not Finlay's is quite telling. The Orangeman's parade here has long since subsided into a straggling tradition, far less vital than, say Caribana, or the countless saint's day parades. Toronto IS a multicultural city, but Iyer's description of it betrays more about his own, post-colonial upbringing, than it tells the truth of this huge, ill-defined municipality. The two points outlined above, while (obviously) nit-picking, hopefully intimate the kind of faulty conclusions and presumptions that "flying visits" like the ones Iyer made to Toronto inevitably produce. The old chestnut about "Thinking globally and acting locally" might have more implications than it seems, and Iyer's book makes you wonder about what other inaccurate generalizations are being made, and turned into "common knowledge", as we struggle to grasp the ever-larger world in which we live.
Rating:
Summary: A little too much?
Review: Iyer is an entertaining writer. That's why I read him. This book, although not excellent, is good (I like "The Lady and the Monk" better though). I really enjoyed the last chapter of the book about his experiences as a foreigner in Japan. I could relate because I too, lived as a foreigner in Japan. But the remainder of the book came across to me as a little bit too much. In other words - exaggerated and overdone. But this is not a worthless book. It's merit comes in remembering that these are the author's ideas and experiences - not everyone else's.
Rating:
Summary: A little too much?
Review: Iyer is an entertaining writer. That's why I read him. This book, although not excellent, is good (I like "The Lady and the Monk" better though). I really enjoyed the last chapter of the book about his experiences as a foreigner in Japan. I could relate because I too, lived as a foreigner in Japan. But the remainder of the book came across to me as a little bit too much. In other words - exaggerated and overdone. But this is not a worthless book. It's merit comes in remembering that these are the author's ideas and experiences - not everyone else's.
Rating:
Summary: Narrowness Is Its Own Reward
Review: Okay, so he's not a deep thinker, but he's a fair to good writer. At best, he succeeds in putting flesh on the bones of the strange new set of dislocations caused by the collision of old national and new corporate empires. Nothing on implications, but he's a nice supplement to writers on globalism who too drily concentrate only on large economic or social considerations. His perspective, biased, non-representative of any reality but his own and his friends, has some charm, some pychological insight, and some good recommendations on new novelists.
Rating: 
Summary: A Great Book From a Great Writer
Review: Pico Iyer is one of the most beautiful writers around. I know few writers who can write as beautifully as he does. Though it is dated, Video Night in Katmandu, is a right on the mark look at travelling throughout Asia. And his Lady and the Monk is simply one of the best books you will ever read. Lady and the Monk is as close to Japan as you can get without actually being there. It was with the in mind, that made me purchase his latest book immediately upon release. However, I never read The Global Soul after reading bad reviews in the Times and on Amazon here. Instead I read the biographies of Ataturk and Hirohito. I picked this book up again to kill the time before reading the new biography of Ho Chi Minh. Like Iyers other works, this book is great. Many of the critics of this book point to the disjointness of the story, which is true but this is done on purpose. The book is as confused to create a jet lag type state which is a fundamental part of the book. Iyer is not for everyone. Iyer is the type of writer that Asia travellers will get the most out of. That is the bottom line. The appreciate this book one must do a lot of travelling to Asia and at the same time know a lot of people who travel. If this is not you, I do not think you will like the book. But again, if you enjoy travel narratives with a heavily slant towards East Asia, read this book. Iyer is a great writer and I enjoyed this book a lot.
Rating:
Summary: A Great Book From a Great Writer
Review: Pico Iyer is one of the most beautiful writers around. I know few writers who can write as beautifully as he does. Though it is dated, Video Night in Katmandu, is a right on the mark look at travelling throughout Asia. And his Lady and the Monk is simply one of the best books you will ever read. Lady and the Monk is as close to Japan as you can get without actually being there. It was with the in mind, that made me purchase his latest book immediately upon release. However, I never read The Global Soul after reading bad reviews in the Times and on Amazon here. Instead I read the biographies of Ataturk and Hirohito. I picked this book up again to kill the time before reading the new biography of Ho Chi Minh. Like Iyers other works, this book is great. Many of the critics of this book point to the disjointness of the story, which is true but this is done on purpose. The book is as confused to create a jet lag type state which is a fundamental part of the book. Iyer is not for everyone. Iyer is the type of writer that Asia travellers will get the most out of. That is the bottom line. The appreciate this book one must do a lot of travelling to Asia and at the same time know a lot of people who travel. If this is not you, I do not think you will like the book. But again, if you enjoy travel narratives with a heavily slant towards East Asia, read this book. Iyer is a great writer and I enjoyed this book a lot.
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