Prisoner S Hope

Set against the stunning backdrop of Georgian Bay, Amanda Doucette finds herself drawn into the world of exploited foreign workers when she meets a Filipino nanny accused of murdering her wealthy employer.

The gripping and inspiring story of two extraordinary women--from their imprisonment by the Taliban to their rescue by U.S. Special Forces. When Dayna Curry and Heather Mercer arrived in Afghanistan, they had come to help bring a better life and a little hope to some of the poorest and most oppressed people in the world. Within a few months, their lives were thrown into chaos as they became pawns in historic international events. They were arrested by the ruling Taliban government for teaching about Christianity to the people with whom they worked. In the middle of their trial, the events of September 11, 2001, led to the international war on terrorism, with the Taliban a primary target. While many feared Curry and Mercer could not survive in the midst of war, Americans nonetheless prayed for their safe return, and in November their prayers were answered. In Prisoners of Hope, Dayna Curry and Heather Mercer tell the story of their work in Afghanistan, their love for the people they served, their arrest, trial, and imprisonment by the Taliban, and their rescue by U.S. Special Forces. The heart of the book will discuss how two middle-class American women decided to leave the comforts of home in exchange for the opportunity to serve the disadvantaged, and how their faith motivated them and sustained them through the events that followed. Their story is a magnificent narrative of ordinary women caught in extraordinary circumstances as a result of their commitment to serve the poorest and most oppressed women and children in the world. This book will be inspiring to those who seek a purpose greater than themselves.

The eminent cultural historian H. Stuart Hughes examines the works of Italo Svevo, Alberto Moravia, Carlo Levi, Primo Levi, Natalia Ginzburg, and Giorgio Bassani--six Italian prose writers of Jewish or part-Jewish origin--and gracefully shows how these writers combine in various measures their ancestral Jewish heritage with recent experiences of antisemitic persecution.

Is this the day I die? Li Quan asks himself this question daily, knowing that he might be killed for practicing his faith. American businessman Ben Fielding has no idea what his brilliant former college roommate is facing in China. He expects his old friend has fulfilled his dream of becoming a university professor. But when they are reunited in China after twenty years, both men are shocked at what they discover about each other. Thrown together in an hour of encroaching darkness, both must make choices that will determine not only the destinies of two men, but two families, two nations, and two worlds.

President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society was breathtaking in its scope and dramatic in its impact. Over the course of his time in office, Johnson passed over one thousand pieces of legislation designed to address an extraordinary array of social issues. Poverty and racial injustice were foremost among them, but the Great Society included legislation on issues ranging from health care to immigration to education and environmental protection. But while the Great Society was undeniably ambitious, it was by no means perfect. In Prisoners of Hope, prize-winning historian Randall B. Woods presents the first comprehensive history of the Great Society, exploring both the breathtaking possibilities of visionary politics, as well as its limits. Soon after becoming president, Johnson achieved major legislative victories with the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act. But he wasn't prepared for the substantial backlash that ensued. Community Action Programs were painted as dangerously subversive, at worst a forum for minority criminals and at best a conduit through which the federal government and the inner city poor could bypass the existing power structure. Affirmative action was rife with controversy, and the War on Poverty was denounced by conservatives as the cause of civil disorder and disregard for the law. As opposition, first from white conservatives, but then also some liberals and African Americans, mounted, Johnson was forced to make a number of devastating concessions in order to secure the future of the Great Society. Even as many Americans benefited, millions were left disappointed, from suburban whites to the new anti-war left to African Americans. The Johnson administration's efforts to draw on aspects of the Great Society to build a viable society in South Vietnam ultimately failed, and as the war in Vietnam descended into quagmire, the president's credibility plummeted even further. A cautionary tale about the unintended consequences of even well-intentioned policy, Prisoners of Hope offers a nuanced portrait of America's most ambitious--and controversial--domestic policy agenda since the New Deal.

Assigned to Hope Nation while recovering from injuries, Captain Nicholas Seafort is appointed liaison to the wealthy planters whose holdings are vital to the Earth-Hope Nation relationship. But he's soon a pawn in a dangerous game when the planters, who fear that Earth has abandoned them to an alien attack, rebel, declaring their independence.

Prisoners of Hope opens a unique window into the minds and hearts of engineers, revealing two characteristics that every successful innovator must have—faith and hope. Steering clear of spiritual clichés, Prisoners of Hope provides practical insights and fresh accounts of innovators doing what they do best. Lanny Vincent writes his book from his thirty years’ experience as facilitator, coach, and “midwife” of corporate innovating. He draws useful parallels between two seemingly different worlds of science and faith. Prior to working with companies like Hewlett-Packard, Sony Electronics, British Telecom, Rockwell, Weyerhaeuser or Whirlpool, Lanny was an ordained Presbyterian minister. From his early experiences within the research and development department of the company, Kimberly-Clark, the author saw familiar patterns among innovating scientists and engineers—faith patterns studied in a completely different context years before. Prisoners of Hope is filled with firsthand accounts of what really happens in the messy, serendipitous process of innovation, and how engineers use faith as their “silent partner.” Richly woven with the threads of current experience and ancient wisdom, Prisoners makes explicit what innovators do naturally to bring their vision to the marketplace—done largely on the wings of faith and hope. The author’s reinterpretations of biblical stories such as David and Goliath, Moses’ burning bush, and Abraham’s aborted sacrifice of Isaac, will help you see the mysteries of faith in action. This book is an inspiring description of how innovators use these patterns to get the lift they need for innovating, and a practical play on the power and potential of faith. Find out how innovators get lift. You will get it too. “A cohesive laminate of logic on innovation” Doug Gilmour, artist, advertising veteran, Clif Bar & Co. “[It] reconnected me with the fundamental power of faith and belief.” – Bruce Beihoff, inventor, technologist, systems modeler

Author asserts that the hopes of loved ones are kept alive by those who would exploit their sorrow.