Addresses the challenge of living in a world broken by intractable issues of poverty and injustice, and offers meditations followed by practical suggestions on how churches and individuals can actually make a difference. What Can One Person Do? confronts a poverty-stricken world, and with clarity of purpose offers practical steps to create lasting change. Global poverty can be reduced through a series of achievable objectives: the eight Millennium Development goals agreed to by the international community at the Millennium Summit in 2000. World leaders and faith communities have adopted the MDGs, as well as the ideas found within this book--for the authors demonstrate that as shared vision grows and as these goals are accomplished, human communities shall indeed flourish.

Contributors: Ann Barham, Chloe Bryer, Ian T. Douglas What Can One Person Do? confronts a poverty-stricken world, and with clarity of purpose offers practical steps to create lasting change. Global poverty can be reduced through a series of achievable objectives: the eight Millennium Development goals agreed to by the international community at the Millennium Summit in 2000. World leaders and faith communities have adopted the MDGs, as well as the ideas found within this book--for the authors demonstrate that as shared vision grows and as these goals are accomplished, human communities shall indeed flourish.

The author, a computer science professor diagnosed with terminal cancer, explores his life, the lessons that he has learned, how he has worked to achieve his childhood dreams, and the effect of his diagnosis on him and his family.

Why do men talk and women gossip, and which is better for you? Why is monogamy a drain on the brain? And why should you be suspicious of someone who has more than 150 friends on Facebook? We are the product of our evolutionary history, and this history colors our everyday lives—from why we joke to the depth of our religious beliefs. In How Many Friends Does One Person Need? Robin Dunbar uses groundbreaking experiments that have forever changed the way evolutionary biologists explain how the distant past underpins our current behavior. We know so much more now than Darwin ever did, but the core of modern evolutionary theory lies firmly in Darwin’s elegantly simple idea: organisms behave in ways that enhance the frequency with which genes are passed on to future generations. This idea is at the heart of Dunbar’s book, which seeks to explain why humans behave as they do. Stimulating, provocative, and immensely enjoyable, his book invites you to explore the number of friends you have, whether you have your father’s brain or your mother’s, whether morning sickness might actually be good for you, why Barack Obama’s 2008 victory was a foregone conclusion, what Gaelic has to do with frankincense, and why we laugh. In the process, Dunbar examines the role of religion in human evolution, the fact that most of us have unexpectedly famous ancestors, and why men and women never seem able to see eye to eye on color.

A few years ago, Debbie Tenzer was feeling overwhelmed by all the crises in the news. But rather than give in to despair, she thought, Maybe I can’t solve our big problems, but I know I can do something. She realized that helping doesn’t have to be difficult or expensive or time-consuming. You can help simply by doing one nice thing. So that’s what she vowed to do, one day a week. Not every day–she says she’s not that nice–but once a week was a promise she could keep. So she started a website, DoOneNiceThing.com, and each week she posted an easy way to help people around town or across the globe. Good news traveled fast, and now Debbie is the leader of a worldwide kindness movement with fellow Nice-o-holics in ninety countries. They’ve sent . . . • cans of food to food banks and schools • notebooks to soldiers who will give them to Afghan children • gifts to foster children whose birthdays are overlooked • and much more Do One Nice Thing has many new, easy ideas for small deeds that anyone can do (and includes explicit information on how exactly to execute the ideas, so you don’t have to go digging for information or resources). There’s even a chapter of nice things you can do in minutes without leaving your desk. Join Debbie and her army of Nice-o-holics, and give the world some help–and some hope. Best of all, the more help you give, the more hopeful you’ll feel. And before you know it, you won’t be able to stop.