Great Peacemakers: True Stories from Around the World [Hardcover]

Ken Beller (Author), Heather Chase (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0980138205 | ISBN-13: 978-0980138207 | Publication Date: February 12, 2008

It is said that the choices we make determine the lives we lead. In this book you will meet twenty inspiring individuals who have made peace their choice in life¿from a Vietnamese monk to a Brazilian musician, from a Swedish children¿s author to an Iranian-American architect. Exploring a wide range of approaches to peacemaking, Great Peacemakers is organized into five paths to peace: choosing nonviolence, living peace, honoring diversity, valuing all life, and caring for the planet. Each path showcases the true life stories of four amazing peacemakers who have successfully cultivated peace in a variety of ways. As a whole, the book strives for an overall balance of race, nationality, religion, gender, age, and level of fame. Whether you are a parent seeking positive roles models for your children, an educator looking for thought-provoking material for your students, or someone simply wanting an uplifting read, then Great Peacemakers is sure to meet your needs and inspire the peacemaker in you. Great Peacemakers won the 2007 International PeaceWriting Award from the Peace and Justice Studies Association and the OMNI Center for Peace, Justice, and Ecology. The book is also endorsed by three heads of state and three Nobel Peace Prize recipients, including Dr. Oscar Arias, president of Costa Rica and Nobel Laureate, who said: "Powerful, well-researched and, above all, timely, Great Peacemakers should be required reading for the youth of the world."

Product Details

• Hardcover: 208 pages
• Publisher: LTS Press (February 12, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0980138205
• ISBN-13: 978-0980138207
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #304,091 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A treasure for our times!, February 23, 2008

By 

J. Stepaniak - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Great Peacemakers: True Stories from Around the World (Hardcover)

Great Peacemakers is a fascinating read about twenty incredible people--some famous or familiar, some less so--whose positive influences have reverberated around the world and affected modern history in surprisingly countless ways. The authors carefully and thoughtfully organized the peacemakers and their particular areas of focus into five categories, or paths: Choosing Nonviolence, Living Peace, Honoring Diversity, Valuing All Life, and Caring for the Planet. Each theme has a vital point of social, political, environmental, and ethical significance and urgency, conveyed through the courage, creativity, and insights of the peacemakers.

In selecting the peacemakers to profile, the authors strove for balance of race, nationality, religion, gender, age, and level of fame. The outcome is an exceptional collection of intriguing personalities and role models, each one equally memorable and inspirational. The text is easy to read but intelligently composed. Each segment consists of five pages that highlight the overall theme of each person's life. This format prevents the reader from getting bogged down in detail while gleaning the essence of the peacemakers, their accomplishments and challenges, and their individual approaches to peace. The photographs bring the individuals to life, and the quotations at the end of each segment encapsulate the core of their messages in memorable affirmations.

Great Peacemakers is the kind of book that you want to read from cover to cover. Because each segment is self-contained, it's easy to complete just one a day, if time is limited, or if you want to use it as a topic of meditation, discussion, or further exploration.

This book is ideal for youth through adults. It would also be an excellent text for middle school, high school, and college-level classes, as well as book clubs, community-service volunteers, activists, and faith-based groups. In fact, anyone who wants an uplifting, thought-provoking read will find this book to be a treasure--one that should be revisited frequently.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beyond 5 Stars--Marks Beginning of Era of Peace, February 23, 2008

By 

Robert D. Steele (Oakton, VA United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Great Peacemakers: True Stories from Around the World (Hardcover)

This book was brilliantly conceived and executed. I like it so much I am adding it to my travel series for recurring selective reading.

I am very impressed by the research and the creative analysis that paved the way for this book to be truly in a class of its own. Indeed, I think the authors are on to something that could and should be a multilingual series used in every classroom on the planet.

While the table of contents is impressive, with twenty great souls selected for concise review, what really got my attention was the Introduction, where the authors observe that after much research, they found five distinct groups or "paths to peace:"

choosing nonviolence,

living peace,

honoring diversity,

valuing all life, and

caring for the planet.

There is one other, public intelligence (a topic on which I have written four books, published a fifth, and have just commissioned three new edited works (Collective Intelligence: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace; Peace Intelligence: Assuring a Good Life for All; and Commercial Intelligence: From Moral Green to Golden Peace).

Each of the chapters is short, easy to read, relevant, and concluded by a page of thoughts from the person in their own words, and that is the primary reason this book made the extraordinary leap into permanent travel with me.

Two from Martin Luther King, Jr. represent all that I live to correct:

"The way of acquiescence leads to moral and spiritual suicide."

"Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men."

See my varied lists and my many non-fiction reviews for additional reading.

Amazon allows me to add ten links to any review. Here are nine more, six books and three DVDs, on the subject of Peace. I praise God every day for Dick Cheney--only the presence of such a nakedly amoral war criminal could have sparked the revolution in human affairs that is about to take place. Peace is the only winnable war, and the Earth Intelligence Networki, co-founded by 24 leading-edge minds, strives to empower every person on the planet with public intelligence in the public interests.

The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People
A Power Governments Cannot Suppress
The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About It
Peacekeeping Intelligence: Emerging Concepts for the Future
The New Craft of Intelligence: Personal, Public, & Political--Citizen's Action Handbook for Fighting Terrorism, Genocide, Disease, Toxic Bombs, & Corruption
Tibet - Cry of the Snow Lion
The Snow Walker
Peace One Day

I am *very* pleased to have read this book, and I do not plan to put it away. This volume is not just a keeper, it is a travel companion rich with good intentions that are contagious. Well done!

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars FINALLY!! A book that celebrates PEACE rather than violence!!!, February 21, 2008

By 

Stephen Pletko "Uncle Stevie" (London, Ontario, Canada) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Great Peacemakers: True Stories from Around the World (Hardcover)

XXXXX

Who said these revealing STATEMENTS?

(1) "Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided [people]."
(2) "If peace is what every government says it seeks, and peace is the yearning of every heart, [then] why aren't we studying it and teaching it in schools."
(3) "It is far too easy to discourage, all to easy to criticize, to complain, to rebuke. Let us try instead to see even a small amount of good in a person and concentrate on that."
(4) "If we want to save face as a civilized nation, we have to resolve some questions--ethical ones, not economic."
(5) "War is more than a metaphor; we are in a real struggle to protect the life support systems of the planet from a degradation that is every bit as threatening as a bomb or bullet."

The above five statements were made by five of the twenty peacemakers (that is, those "individuals who have made peace their choice in life") profiled in this powerful, inspirational book. Note that on the book's cover (displayed above by Amazon or available at the book`s Internet site, great peacemakers.com) is what looks like a round convex mirror that is reflecting the coloured portraits of the twenty peacemakers (six of whom are female, nine of whom are deceased) profiled in this book.

The book's authors are (A) Ken Beller, cofounder and president of "a consulting firm that links values to the bottom line" and (B) Heather Chase, founder of an "international group of models dedicated to promoting animal-friendly and environmentally-conscious products and causes."

The book itself represents five years of research.

The main feature of this book is how it is organized. Each of the twenty peacemakers is categorized into one of five "PATHS TO PEACE," namely:

(i) Choosing non-violence
(ii) Living peace
(iii) Honouring diversity
(iv) Valuing all life
(v) Caring for the planet

It was decided that four peacemakers per path would be profiled.

Another feature is that each peacemaker's life story have been summarized into five pages!! Why was this done? So as "to highlight the overall theme of each person's life and not bury it in too much detail."

Each well-written peacemaker profile has the following format:

(a) Portrait of the peacemaker (the same as on the book's cover but this time in black and white).

(b) Summary of the summary. In other words, a peacemaker's life story that has been summarized into five pages is further summarized into a few sentences. The reader thus learns the essence of a particular peacemaker. Here is an example of a three-sentence summary of the summary:

"World-renowned physician, Nobel laureate, organist, theologian, philosopher, and humanitarian, [this great peacemaker] was a modern-day Renaissance man. Most famous for his medical service in the African jungle, [this great peacemaker] felt that his greatest contribution to the world was the ethic of Reverence for Life. Saying, "I wanted to make my life my argument," [this great peacemaker] lived this ethic, encouraging it on a global level as the basis of world peace."

(c) Five page summary proper. Gives the key facts about a particular peacemaker, avoiding unnecessary and superfluous detail. For example, the great peacemaker mentioned in (b) above has a five page summary composed of twelve paragraphs. Two black and white pictures are included within this summary.

(d) Actual thought-provoking quotations or statements (five to nine of them) for each peacemaker. Note that the five STATEMENTS above were said from one peacemaker in a particular PATH TO PEACE. For example, STATEMENT (1) above was uttered by one of the four peacemakers in PATH TO PEACE (i) also above.

Finally, who was this book written for? Answer:

(1) Anyone wanting an uplifting read. (We can all use this.)
(2) Parents looking for positive role models for their children (as opposed to the majority of negative role models so prevalent in today's society).
(3) Educators seeking inspirational material for their students.

In conclusion, the authors state:

"Our aim in creating [this book] was to help promote peace by showcasing true-life stories of people who have successfully cultivated peace in a variety of ways."

Have they succeeded in their aim? In my opinion, they've hit the bull's-eye!! I can't wait for the next edition of this book that will profile twenty more great peacemakers!! I leave you with another statement uttered by yet another peacemaker profiled in this amazing book:

"Humans can never be completely non-violent, but we can certainly move in this direction."

(first published early 2008; acknowledgements; introduction; 5 parts or 20 chapters; conclusion; main narrative 170 pages; bibliography; index; photo credits; about the authors)

<<Stephen Pletko, London, Ontario, Canada>>

XXXXX