Our experiences of hope in the face of difficulties are as varied as our lives, and yet there has been very little examination of the ways we hope. A skilled and compassionate storyteller, McCarroll introduces readers to five expressions of hope through detailed and poignant case studies. On that foundation she then builds a discussion of the possibilities, limitations, and value of each approach. The result is an engaging and optimistic exploration of hope in difficult times.
What are the major ways in which hope manifests itself in our time? And how should we understand these different ways of looking traumatic events in the eye? For answers to these questions and others, the author introduces readers to five expressions of hope through detailed and poignant case studies.
'In my end is my beginning', wrote T. S. Eliot at the close of his poem East Coker, and that line gave me the title for this book. With it I should like to express the power of the Christian hope, for Christian hope is the power of resurrection from life's failures and defeats. It is the power of the rebirth of life out of the shadows of death. It is the power for the new beginning at the place where guilt has made life impossible. From the Introduction by Jurgen Moltmann In this short doctrine of hope, Jurgen Moltmann examines the personal experiences in life, in which the future is awaited, times when we search for new beginnings and find them. In three parts that correspond to the three beginnings in life: birth, rebirth and resurrection, Moltmann extols the true value of Christian hope that powers new beginnings. Jurgen Moltmann is Emeritus Professor of Systematic Theology at the University of Tubingen, Germany. He is the author of a number of books published by SCM Press, including Theology of Hope, The Crucified God and The Church in the Power of the Spirit.
A magical debut about an enchanted house that offers refuge to women in their time of need Distraught that her academic career has stalled, Alba is walking through her hometown of Cambridge, England, when she finds herself in front of a house she’s never seen before, 11 Hope Street. A beautiful older woman named Peggy greets her and invites her to stay, on the house’s usual conditions: she has ninety-nine nights to turn her life around. With nothing left to lose, Alba takes a chance and moves in. She soon discovers that this is no ordinary house. Past residents have included Virginia Woolf and Dorothy Parker, who, after receiving the assistance they needed, hung around to help newcomers—literally, in talking portraits on the wall. As she escapes into this new world, Alba begins a journey that will heal her wounds—and maybe even save her life. Filled with a colorful and unforgettable cast of literary figures, The House at the End of Hope Street is a charming, whimsical novel of hope and feminine wisdom that is sure to appeal to fans of Jasper Fforde and especially Sarah Addison Allen.
Presents the story of Plenty Coups, the last great Chief of the Crow Nation. This title contains a philosophical and ethical inquiry into a people faced with the end of their way of life.
“[A] sharply observed study . . . richly detailed portraits.”—Economist Somini Sengupta emigrated from Calcutta to California as a young child in 1975. Returning thirty years later as the bureau chief for The New York Times, she found a vastly different country: one defined as much by aspiration and possibility—at least by the illusion of possibility—as it is by the structures of sex and caste. The End of Karma is an exploration of this new India through the lens of young people from different worlds: a woman who becomes a Maoist rebel; a brother charged for the murder of his sister, who had married the “wrong” man; a woman who opposes her family and hopes to become a police officer. Driven by aspiration—and thwarted at every step by state and society—they are making new demands on India’s democracy for equality of opportunity, dignity for girls, and civil liberties. Sengupta spotlights these stories of ordinary men and women, weaving together a groundbreaking portrait of a country in turmoil.
In the chaos of World War II, having lost everything, Polish teenagers Helena and Luzyna Grabowski are shipped to a refugee camp in Persia. When they hear that orphans are being selected for relocation to New Zealand, Helena is filled with hope - until she learns only her younger sister has a place. On the morning she is to be transported, Luzyna fails to join the chosen group, and Helena goes in her stead. But the horrors of war, and her guilt at abandoning her sister, follow her on the journey across the sea and blind her to the devotion of James, a charming, heroic young Allied pilot. If Helena can let go and dare to hope again, she may finally step out of the long shadow of her past to find a future made whole.
“[A] landmark book . . . Solnit illustrates how the uprisings that begin on the streets can upend the status quo and topple authoritarian regimes” (Vice). A book as powerful and influential as Rebecca Solnit’s Men Explain Things to Me, her Hope in the Dark was written to counter the despair of activists at a moment when they were focused on their losses and had turned their back to the victories behind them—and the unimaginable changes soon to come. In it, she makes a radical case for hope as a commitment to act in a world whose future remains uncertain and unknowable. Drawing on her decades of activism and a wide reading of environmental, cultural, and political history, Solnit argues that radicals have a long, neglected history of transformative victories, that the positive consequences of our acts are not always immediately seen, directly knowable, or even measurable, and that pessimism and despair rest on an unwarranted confidence about what is going to happen next. Now, with a moving new introduction explaining how the book came about and a new afterword that helps teach us how to hope and act in our unnerving world, she brings a new illumination to the darkness of our times in an unforgettable new edition of this classic book. “One of the best books of the 21st century.” —The Guardian “No writer has better understood the mix of fear and possibility, peril and exuberance that’s marked this new millennium.” —Bill McKibben, New York Times–bestselling author of Falter “An elegant reminder that activist victories are easily forgotten, and that they often come in extremely unexpected, roundabout ways.” —The New Yorker
In a narrative-redefining approach, Engaging the Evil Empire dramatically alters how we look at the beginning of the end of the Cold War. Tracking key events in US-Soviet relations across the years between 1980 and 1985, Simon Miles shows that covert engagement gave way to overt conversation as both superpowers determined that open diplomacy was the best means of furthering their own, primarily competitive, goals. Miles narrates the history of these dramatic years, as President Ronald Reagan consistently applied a disciplined carrot-and-stick approach, reaching out to Moscow while at the same time excoriating the Soviet system and building up US military capabilities. The received wisdom in diplomatic circles is that the beginning of the end of the Cold War came from changing policy preferences and that President Reagan in particular opted for a more conciliatory and less bellicose diplomatic approach. In reality, Miles clearly demonstrates, Reagan and ranking officials in the National Security Council had determined that the United States enjoyed a strategic margin of error that permitted it to engage Moscow overtly. As US grand strategy developed, so did that of the Soviet Union. Engaging the Evil Empire covers five critical years of Cold War history when Soviet leaders tried to reduce tensions between the two nations in order to gain economic breathing room and, to ensure domestic political stability, prioritize expenditures on butter over those on guns. Miles's bold narrative shifts the focus of Cold War historians away from exclusive attention on Washington by focusing on the years of back-channel communiqués and internal strategy debates in Moscow as well as Prague and East Berlin.
