Institutions are very precious. If any idea is going to persist into the future, then it needs an institution to keep it going. Each of us comes to understand, often only gradually over the decades, how some influences from our earlier life have affected us. Some will have been inspiring. Some will have given us direct models of how to behave or how not to behave. Indeed, it is often the case that the deeper an influence turns out to have been, in the long run, the less likely it is that we noticed it at the time it was happening. For this reason, it has become necessary to find the time to reflect on and express gratitude for the institutions that helped form who we are and the work that we do. This collection of essays explores the impact of one institution on twenty-five participants, twenty-five years after we worked together. The Institution was Liverpool Hope University College and is now Liverpool Hope University. By telling and reflecting on our stories, we aim to encourage others to think about their own experiences and, ultimately, our earnest hope is that a greater awareness of this aspect of university life will help to transform our collective understanding of the nature of universities in particular, and of communities, institutions, or societies in general. But there was something special about belonging to a community called Hope.

The world has never been so rich – at least financially. And so unsustainable – economically, socially and environmentally. In fact, we are all living a “nemesis of wealth” (nealth), caused by our short-sighted choices of the past, which focused only on ROE, NPV and shareholders’ value. This “nealth” is now paying us back not only with loads of public debt, inflationary money and debased cryptocurrencies; but also with unbearable social discrimination, geopolitical tensions and wars and de-globalization; and last but not least, with the ticking time bomb of climate change. If this is the legacy of our “intergenerational arbitrage,” what is the future for the Gen Z and for the Gen Alpha to come? How can they manage and overcome all these unbearable burdens to regain the lost sustainability? A new definition of wealth, based on a more holistic “total sustainability,” is then required; and correspondingly, new models to design, manage and value a targeted wealth creation that is relevant to many stakeholders. Never has been the challenge of change for the wealth management industry so critical – as in the future of wealth, and of its industry, could lie the future of humanity as well.

In this fearful and cynical age, when doom-and-gloomers forecast catastrophe and fearmongers try to get us to hedge our bets on the future with insurance policies and safety nets, we need to rediscover real hope. Lewis Smedes says, "Hope is as native to our spirits as thinking is to our brain. Keep hoping, and you keep living. Stop hoping, and you start dying." He shows how hope powers every good thing we accomplish and helps us overcome every bad thing we encounter. He talks about how to keep hope alive in difficult times, discern false hope from true hope, and move beyond worry to trust in God.

The location is Kinshasa, the capital of The Democratic Republic of Congo. It is the Modern Day and there is one mission: survival. Two initial strangers, an ordinary African boy living in the environs of the capital and the daughter of the President, lead two complete contrasting lifestyles. Their lives become quickly intertwined, however, as the country is thrown into yet another civil war. As time progresses, their friendship is formed, and they quickly become reliant upon each other for survival through multiple events that further tear apart the country. Their trust and reliance upon each other develops to heights previously unknown to them. The story expresses the importance of hope and how it is universal, even in the nation that boasts the worst war figures since World War II - 5.4 million people had been killed through gunfire, but many also due to the prolonged periods of starvation and disease from 1998 to 2008. 1000 people died each day during 2004... - www.fleetinghope.com -

Based closely in spirit upon the most recent development in prosodic studies, Verbal Transformation, Despair, and Hope in The Waste Land attempts another round of “philosophical investigation”. The book demonstrates how The Waste Land could be read afresh in terms of the hidden verbal transformation that reveals the overlooked performative and collaborative nature of language. This verbal transformation makes The Waste Land flow naturally as truly “rhythmical creation of [meaningful] beauty” the way Poe defines poetry, especially through what Eliot calls “auditory imagination” or what Herder calls “intermediary sensation” that makes the poetry “the first language” of humanity or “the dictionary of the soul.” The verbal transformation also serendipitously makes sounds of despair the sounds of hope.

Since the end of the Cold War, the United States Army has been reengineered and downsized more thoroughly than any other business. In the early 1990s, General Sullivan, army chief of staff, and Colonel Harper, his key strategic planner, took the post-Cold War army into the Information Age. Faced with a 40 percent reduction in staff and funding, they focused on new peacetime missions, dismantled a cumbersome bureaucracy, reinvented procedures, and set the guidelines for achieving a vast array of new goals. Hope Is Not a Method explains how they did it and shows how their experience is extremely relevant to today's businesses. From how to stay on top of long-range issues to how to maintain a productive work force during times of change, it offers invaluable lessons in leadership and provides proven tactics any business can implement.

A rich, wide-ranging portrait of the divisions among Israelis today, at a critical juncture in their country’s history, by a veteran New York Times correspondent who has spent decades working in Israel “A wondrous tale told through the agonizing and uplifting stories of Israel’s many tribes — Jewish and Arab, religious and secular, new immigrants and veterans, soldiers and settlers.”—Martin Indyk, author of Master of the Game, and former U.S. ambassador to Israel Despite Israel's determined staying power in a hostile environment, its military might, and the innovation it fosters in businesses globally, the country is more divided than ever. The old guard—socialist secular elites and idealists—are a dying breed, and the state’s democratic foundations are being challenged. A dynamic and exuberant country of nine million, Israel is now largely comprised of native-born Hebrew speakers, and yet any permanent sense of security and normalcy is elusive. In The Land of Hope and Fear, we meet Israelis: Jews and Arabs, religious and secular, Eastern and Western, liberals and zealots—plagued by perennial conflict and existential threats, citizens who remain deeply polarized politically, socially, and ideologically, even as they undergo generational change and redefine what it is to be an Israeli. Who are these people and to what do they aspire? In moving narratives and with on-the-ground reporting, Isabel Kershner reveals the core of what holds Israel together and the forces that threaten its future through the lens of real people: a son of Zionist pioneers, cynical about what is to come and his people’s status in it; a woman in her nineties whose life in a kibbutz has disintegrated; a brilliant poet caught up in the political maelstrom; an Arab gallery owner archiving a lost Palestinian landscape; and a descendant of the Russian aliyah; representing millions of culturally and religiously different Jews, laying bare the question Who is an Israeli? The Land of Hope and Fear decodes Israel today at its seventy-fifth anniversary, examining the ways in which the country has both exceeded and failed the ideals and expectations of its founders.