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

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.