Excerpt from Books for Living by Will Schwalbe, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Despite (or, trusting Lin as I do, because of) all this loafing, Lin led a wildly productive and singular life, producing a prodigious amount of work throughout his many years (articles, essays, books, and even novels) while shuttling back and forth between continents and religions. This in itself intrigued me—­because I've always felt that people who have moved from one country to another, either as immigrants or refugees, have perspectives that others lack; and that people who have explored several faiths, not just the one they inherited, may have thought more deeply about faith than the rest of us. Lin was a seeker in politics, too—­never aligned with any party for very long, he was always on the lookout for corruption (which he almost always found).

Lin Yutang was born in China in 1895, the fifth of eight children. His father had been illiterate as a young adult but taught himself to read and write, eventually becoming a Christian pastor with his own church in a remote part of Longxi County, Fujian Province. As a young boy, Lin would jump into his father's pulpit and deliver speeches to the congregation; from his earliest years, he was in love with language.

Lin studied Christian theology at a Western-­style university in China but soon grew embittered, feeling that he had been denied exposure to the great Chinese culture from which he came. From then on, he studied Chinese literature and culture and followed the Tao and Buddhism. While he was in college, a beloved sister, who had been denied a college education by their father and thus had no choice but to marry, died of the plague while eight months pregnant. From then on, Lin became a crusader for higher-­educational opportunities for women and also decided to devote himself to battling for social justice.

In 1919, Lin went to Harvard, but only for a time, dropping out because he couldn't afford the tuition and then moving to Paris to work. Soon, he found his way back to school and received his M.A. and Ph.D. in Germany, writing his thesis in German on the subject of Chinese philology. But he then returned to China, in 1923, to teach, interrupted by a short stint with the Nationalist government. He continued teaching in Shanghai and also began to write frequently for a magazine he founded, contributing many columns in Chinese critical of the Nationalist government. It was in Shanghai, in 1933, that he met Pearl Buck, who was a fan of his columns. In 1935, following the success of My Country and My People, his first book (the New York Times would later write that it "burst like a shell over the Western world"), Lin moved to New York and wrote a whole slew of books including The Importance of Living and one about Chinese Americans and another, published in 1943, called Between Tears and Laughter that was critical of America for its racist policies at home and around the world.

During World War II, Lin traveled to China and reported from there, now praising the Nationalists. But he was obsessed at that time by the desire to create a Chinese typewriter, something that had never been thought possible: Chinese is a language that requires thousands of individual characters in order to print a newspaper, as compared with twenty-­six letters for English.

Lin sunk into that effort every cent he had made from all of his bestsellers and lost it all when he failed after repeated tries to create a prototype that could be manufactured for an affordable price. Still, his concept and mechanics were used for code-­breaking and transcription machines. Thanks to his investment in the machine, he and his wife found themselves bankrupt after the war with three daughters to support in New York City. Financial salvation came in 1948 when he was offered a job as head of UNESCO's Arts and Letters Division in Paris. He loathed having to wake up in the morning and go to an office, but he had no choice.

Excerpted from Books for Living by Will Schwalbe. Copyright © 2016 by Will Schwalbe. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.