Great Peacemakers

Profiles twenty people who have promoted peace in their lives from a Vietnamese monk to a Brazilian musician. Explores five approaches to peacemaking: choosing nonviolence, living peace, honoring diversity, valuing all life, and caring for the planet.

Dear White Peacemakers is a breakup letter to division, a love letter to God’s beloved community, and an eviction notice to the violent powers that have sustained racism for centuries. Race is one of the hardest topics to discuss in America. Many white Christians avoid talking about it altogether. But a commitment to peacemaking requires white people to step out of their comfort and privilege and into the work of anti-racism. Dear White Peacemakers is an invitation to white Christians to come to the table and join this hard work and holy calling. Rooted in the life, ministry, and teachings of Jesus, this book is a challenging call to transform white shame, fragility, saviorism, and privilege, in order to work together to build the Beloved Community as anti-racism peacemakers. Written in the wake of George Floyd’s death, Dear White Peacemakers draws on the Sermon on the Mount, Spirituals, and personal stories from author Osheta Moore’s work as a pastor in St. Paul, Minnesota. Enter into this story of shalom and join in the urgent work of anti-racism peacemaking.

A landmark work of narrative history, Paris 1919 is the first full-scale treatment of the Peace Conference in more than twenty-five years. It offers a scintillating view of those dramatic and fateful days when much of the modern world was sketched out, when countries were created—Iraq, Yugoslavia, Israel—whose troubles haunt us still. Winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize • Winner of the PEN Hessell Tiltman Prize • Winner of the Duff Cooper Prize Between January and July 1919, after “the war to end all wars,” men and women from around the world converged on Paris to shape the peace. Center stage, for the first time in history, was an American president, Woodrow Wilson, who with his Fourteen Points seemed to promise to so many people the fulfillment of their dreams. Stern, intransigent, impatient when it came to security concerns and wildly idealistic in his dream of a League of Nations that would resolve all future conflict peacefully, Wilson is only one of the larger-than-life characters who fill the pages of this extraordinary book. David Lloyd George, the gregarious and wily British prime minister, brought Winston Churchill and John Maynard Keynes. Lawrence of Arabia joined the Arab delegation. Ho Chi Minh, a kitchen assistant at the Ritz, submitted a petition for an independent Vietnam. For six months, Paris was effectively the center of the world as the peacemakers carved up bankrupt empires and created new countries. This book brings to life the personalities, ideals, and prejudices of the men who shaped the settlement. They pushed Russia to the sidelines, alienated China, and dismissed the Arabs. They struggled with the problems of Kosovo, of the Kurds, and of a homeland for the Jews. The peacemakers, so it has been said, failed dismally; above all they failed to prevent another war. Margaret MacMillan argues that they have unfairly been made the scapegoats for the mistakes of those who came later. She refutes received ideas about the path from Versailles to World War II and debunks the widely accepted notion that reparations imposed on the Germans were in large part responsible for the Second World War. Praise for Paris 1919 “It’s easy to get into a war, but ending it is a more arduous matter. It was never more so than in 1919, at the Paris Conference. . . . This is an enthralling book: detailed, fair, unfailingly lively. Professor MacMillan has that essential quality of the historian, a narrative gift.” —Allan Massie, The Daily Telegraph (London)

In this illuminating journey around the globe, Scott A. Hunt takes us face to face with true heroes including: the Dalai Lama; the famed dissident of Burma, Aung San Suu Kyi; and the activist who brought peace to Latin America, Oscar Arias of Costa Rica, who share their historic struggles and show us how to find optimism in the face of anguish, and compassion in the place of animosity. What does it mean to fight for peace? From the riotous streets in Burma to a prison cell in Vietnam, from the bombed-out streets of Belfast to the refugee camps of Palestine, Scott A. Hunt travels across the globe, often under arduous conditions, to report from the major battles that shaped and continue to shape our world. Recounting histories that were not taught in school, and uncovering lessons which may have been brushed aside, Scott A. Hunt coaxes out in intimate conversations staggering stories from Vietnam's leading dissident Thich Quang Do, famed primate specialist and humanitarian Dr. Jane Goodall, Cambodia's Supreme Patriarch Maha Ghosananda, Ireland's Nobel Peace Laureate John Hume and other great leaders who have battled to end the brutality against the people and causes they cherish. In the end, The Future of Peace reveals what it means to remain steadfast to a vision of compassion, to be a leader, and to preserve peace in our own day-to-day lives. The Future of Peace is an extraordinary investigation that offers far-ranging insights and invaluable lessons - a book that changes the way we think about the world and our responsibility toward one another.

These are the stories of 365 women, men and children worldwide who have acted as peacemakers during the last 2500 years. They include human rights and antiwar activists, scientists and artists, educators and scholars, songwriters and poets, film directors and authors, diplomats and economists, environmentalists and mystics, prophets and policymakers. All sacrified for the dream of peace, some even died for it.

In the pages of this book, you will meet more than 100 heroes, but most of them are not the kind of heroes our culture celebrates for muscle, beauty and wealth. These are peacemakers. They circle the planet. A few are famous like Gandhi and Bono of U2. But most of them you will discover for the first time in these stories. Watch out! Reading about their lives may inspire you to step up into their courageous circle.

America's Peacemakers: The Community Relations Service and Civil Rights tells the behind-the-scenes story of a small federal agency that made a big difference in civil rights conflicts over the last half century. In this second edition of Resolving Racial Conflict: The Community Relations Service and Civil Rights, 1964–1989, Grande Lum continues Bertram Levine’s excellent scholarship, expanding the narrative to consider the history of the Community Relations Service (CRS) of the U.S. Department of Justice over the course of the last three decades. That the Trump administration has sought to eliminate CRS gives this book increased urgency and relevance. Covered in this expanded edition are the post–9/11 efforts of the CRS to prevent violence and hate crimes against those perceived as Middle Eastern. Also discussed are the cross-border Elián González custody dispute and the notable tragedies of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown, both of which brought police interaction with communities of color back into the spotlight. The 2009 Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr., Hate Crimes Prevention Act substantially altered CRS’s jurisdiction, which began to focus on gender, gender identity, religion, sexual orientation, and disability in addition to race, color, and national origin. Lum’s documentation of this expanded jurisdiction provides insight into the progression of civil rights. The ongoing story of the Community Relations Service is a crucial component of the national narrative on civil rights and conflict resolution. This new edition will be highly informative to all readers and useful to professionals and academics in the civil rights, dispute resolution, domestic and international peacemaking, and law enforcement-community relations fields.

Now more than ever, people are painfully divided politically, religiously, and culturally. And yet, there is a commonality in our faith traditions that can help us turn away from polarization and create a greater sense of community in which our differences are honored. The Peacemaker's Path brings together wisdom from the world's major religious traditions, including Bahá'í, Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Jainism, Judaism, Native American spiritualities, Sikhism, Taoism, and Zoroastrianism, showing that we have much more in common than what divides us. Through daily readings that explore the tenets, teachings, writings, and prayers of these diverse faith traditions, you will gain new insight, understanding, and connection with people from different religious backgrounds. Each day offers a reflection, scripture passages from the world's religions, questions to contemplate, a call to action, and a closing prayer. May we realize the tremendous importance of building bridges of peace in our own lives, our communities, and our world. Loving our friends is easy; loving the "other" will bring shalom.