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Cover of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

  • 421 pages · about 7 hours
  • First published 1974
  • 78 editions

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1 About this book

"The real cycle you're working on is a cycle called 'yourself.'"One of the most important and influential books of the past half-century, Robert M. Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is a powerful, moving, and penetrating examination of how we live and a meditation on how to live better.

The narrative of a father on a summer motorcycle trip across America's Northwest with his young son, it becomes a profound personal and philosophical odyssey into life's fundamental questions. A true modern classic, it remains at once touching and transcendent, resonant with the myriad confusions of existence and the small, essential triumphs that propel us forward.

Good for readers who want: a true life story, philosophy, and psychology.

  • Biography
  • Philosophy
  • Psychology
  • Existentialism
  • Autobiography
  • Zen Buddhism
  • Description and travel
  • Fathers and sons

2 About Robert M. Pirsig

1928–2017

Robert Maynard Pirsig (; September 6, 1928 – April 24, 2017) was an American writer and philosopher. He is the author of the philosophical books Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values (1974) and Lila: An Inquiry into Morals (1991), and he co-authored On Quality: An Inquiry Into Excellence: Selected and Unpublished Writings (2022) along with his wife and editor, Wendy Pirsig.

Bio adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)

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