A gifted Ukrainian-Canadian child has one of the biggest challenges of her life ahead of her—one that could put her in the world spotlight. Vnucka, a child-genius, who was born in Canada to the daughter of Ukrainian-Canadian parents, has come up with a novel idea for peace. With the help of her grandfather, she concocts an unconventional peace plan, which becomes their mission to bring a resolution to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Author, Derek Wolff, moves this character and her mission through a world full of intrigue, wonder, surprise, deception, and disappointment—peppered with good and bad actors. From over-zealous HR head hunters to pestering paparazzi, not to mention, zany Hollywood actors and their performing replicate bots, she experiences a world no child her age could ever imagine. True to form, she never lets go of her prime objective, to bring peace to Ukraine. There’s no stopping this girl...

The Antidote for War and Discontent is a compilation of philosophical essays and poems centered around the fundamental principles of wisdom gained through the words of five great philosophers and the teachers of agape. Robert Price, a former Baptist minister who has been in private practice as a psychotherapist and mental health consultant for over forty years, shares a thesis that examines not only the laws of evolution in order to gain a better understanding of competition for selection, but also how human nature can either sink us or lift us up, depending on the application of either knowledge or love. Price applies the observations of Socrates, Epicurus, Epictetus, Aristotle, and Plato to practical modern day problems and offers insight into how human nature can potentially be transformed in order to make competition, and all laws of nature within us, more progressively positive than negative. Finally, Price studies the Greek philosophy that details three kinds of love as well as their meanings, expressions, and effects. Price presents a compelling case for a new way of thinking about the power of nature and the role evolution plays in securing a cultural evolution that ensures a better and safer human species.

This book combines personal and professional perspectives, using case examples as well as the authors' own childhood experiences, to demonstrate practical strategies for use with children, from drama and storytelling to sculpting with clay. It also equips the reader with knowledge of the theory behind these intervention techniques.

Readers were instantly beguiled by Rob Brezsny's new approach to the humble horoscope when his "Free Will Astrology" column first appeared in 1996. Instead of the generic, one-size-fits-all style of similar columns, Brezsny used witty parables, tender rants, cultural riffs, pagan wisdom, and lively rituals in his playfully positive readings. He brings that same sensibility—and the same message of a smiling universe—to this self-help book for people who may be skeptical about self-help books. Brezsny persuasively advises readers to go along with the universe's good intentions, but his rejection of cynicism and a bleak view of human nature isn't rooted in denial. On the contrary, he makes a case for a cagey optimism that requires a vigorous engagement with the dark forces. He asks us to rethink life as a sublime game created for our amusement and illumination. The book is a chameleon of a tome. You can read it straight through, slowly and surely, or else pick it up and open it at random for tasty hits of inspiration as the spirit moves you. You can even start at the end and weave your way backward. Brezsny has substantially updated this edition—he added nearly one hundred pages—by expanding various sections, adding more than a dozen new pieces and a new chapter, and providing readers with a number of playtime activities and exercises that let them participate through their own writing and drawing. "Brezsny's horoscopes are like little valentines, buoyant and spilling over with mischievousness. They're a soul prognosis." —The New York Times

For more than a century, development discourse and practices have been central to initiatives to change and improve the human condition in response to poverty, deprivation, oppression and inequality. It has informed public policies and shaped the public institutions charged with its implementation and its relations with various forms of associational life. Development: An Antidote for Poverty and Inequality? Reflections on Governance, Planning, Impact and Accountability in South Africa circa 1994 to 2020, is an attempt to examine the extent to which this has occurred in South Africa, an environment that has been impregnated by burgeoning corruption since 1994, the 2008 global economic crises and most recently the COVID-19 pandemic. The pursuit of public policies such as the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP), the National Development Plan (NDP) as well as other related sectoral policies and legislation all envisaged the development of institutional capacity to facilitate planning and implementation. This institutional capacity and resource mobilisation would be enhanced by the formation of partnerships with the private sectorcivil society. However, challenges remain in ascertaining progress through the measurement of performance and the evaluation of impacts nationally and in selected regions and local areas. This book documents and outlines these challenges.

It’s widely accepted that Transcendental Meditation (TM) can create peace for the individual, but can it create peace in society as a whole? And if it can, what could possibly be the mechanism? In An Antidote to Violence Barry Spivack and Patricia Anne Saunders examine the peer-reviewed research and suggest that TM can influence the collective consciousness of a society which leads to a decrease in negative social trends, such as a decline in war fatalities, and to an increase in cooperation between nations. Weaving together psychology, sociology, philosophy, statistics, politics, physics and meditation, An Antidote to Violence provides evidence that we have the knowledge to reduce all kinds of violence in society.

Includes the 1st-12th annual reports of the Massachusetts Peace Society.

This book explores representations of child autonomy and self-governance in children’s literature.The idea of child rule and child realms is central to children’s literature, and childhood is frequently represented as a state of being, with children seen as aliens in need of passports to Adultland (and vice versa). In a sense all children’s literature depends on the idea that children are different, separate, and in command of their own imaginative spaces and places. Although the idea of child rule is a persistent theme in discussions of children’s literature (or about children and childhood) the metaphor itself has never been properly unpacked with critical reference to examples from those many texts that are contingent on the authority and/or power of children. Child governance and autonomy can be seen as natural or perverse; it can be displayed as a threat or as a promise. Accordingly, the "child rule"-motif can be seen in Robinsonades and horror films, in philosophical treatises and in series fiction. The representations of self-ruling children are manifold and ambivalent, and range from the idyllic to the nightmarish. Contributors to this volume visit a range of texts in which children are, in various ways, empowered, discussing whether childhood itself may be thought of as a nationality, and what that may imply. This collection shows how representations of child governance have been used for different ideological, aesthetic, and pedagogical reasons, and will appeal to scholars of children’s literature, childhood studies, and cultural studies.