Andre Norman's early life put him on a path to prison. Raised in poverty and surrounded by dysfunction, Andre gravitated to his neighborhood gang. His choices there led to time in juvenile detention, and eventually a maximum-security prison, with sentences totaling over 100 years. During that time, Andre became one of the most dangerous gang leaders in the Massachusetts prison system. Then came the epiphany. Just before Andre was to be crowned "King of the Prison," he had a realization--that he was about to become the "King of Nowhere." He decided that there had to be a way out. He chose to seek success through education, setting his sights on what others said was impossible--attending Harvard University. Now, as the Ambassador of Hope, Andre leverages his unique experiences to deliver a message of inclusivity and positive change. Whether you work in the boardroom or the mail room, if you need that "second voice" of inspiration to be the change you seek, Andre will help you discover and achieve your purpose in life.

Andre Norman's early life put him on a path to prison. Raised in poverty and surrounded by dysfunction, Andre gravitated to his neighborhood gang. His choices there led to time in juvenile detention, and eventually a maximum-security prison, with sentences totaling over 100 years. During that time, Andre became one of the most dangerous gang leader.

Filled with compelling stories and on-the-ground reports from Rwanda, Bosnia, Sudan, Lebanon and other hotspots, Robert A. Seiple's book demonstrates how you can be an agent of change and ambassador of hope to the most challenging regions of the world.

Vera and the Ambassador is a book to be savored and enjoyed on many levels. Both a behind-the-scenes peek at the operations of a U.S. embassy in a post–Cold War former Soviet satellite and a personal story of a refugee's escape and triumphant return, Vera and Donald Blinken's dual memoir openly details their challenges, setbacks, and victories as they worked in tandem to advance America's interests in Eastern Europe and to restore a former Soviet satellite state to a pre-communist level of prosperity. Hungary in all its cultural glory and historical anguish lies at the heart of this dramatic and deeply personal story. Born in Budapest just prior to World War II, Vera was only five years old when the Germans invaded in 1944. In a harrowing account, she describes how she and her mother managed to survive the atrocities of the war and, in 1950, narrowly escape Soviet-occupied Hungary for the freedom and opportunity of America. Making their way to New York, Vera settled into her adopted country with an indomitable spirit, a vow to become the best American she could be, and a hope of finding some way to give back as a show of gratitude for her good fortune in surviving the destruction of the war. That opportunity came in 1994 when her husband was appointed ambassador to Hungary by President Clinton, just five years into the country's tentative transformation from a command economy and totalitarian government into a market economy and fledgling republic based upon democratic ideals. A former investment banker, Donald might have lacked foreign service experience, but his skills as an administrator and his willingness to try innovative ideas, combined with Vera's knowledge of Hungarian language and culture and her outreach to the Hungarian community, helped them deal head-on with a variety of challenges, including a collapsing economy and the threat of a slide back toward the old ways of communism, and a brutal civil war that raged across the country's southern border in the former Yugoslavia. Replete with colorful characters from the streets of Budapest, humorous scenes at the ambassadorial residence, and accounts of tense high-level diplomatic negotiations in the run-up to Hungary's vote to join NATO, Vera and the Ambassador shows how the Blinkens helped chart a new course for American diplomacy in the mid-1990s. Ultimately, it is also the story of how Hungarians came to see them personally, and memorably, as their Vera and their ambassador.

Paris, 1919. The world's leaders have gathered to rebuild from the ashes of the Great War. But for one woman, the City of Light harbors dark secrets and dangerous liaisons, for which many could pay dearly. Brought to the peace conference by her father, a German diplomat, Margot Rosenthal initially resents being trapped in the congested French capital, where she is still looked upon as the enemy. But as she contemplates returning to Berlin and a life with Stefan, the wounded fiancé she hardly knows anymore, she decides that being in Paris is not so bad after all. Bored and torn between duty and the desire to be free, Margot strikes up unlikely alliances: with Krysia, an accomplished musician with radical acquaintances and a secret to protect; and with Georg, the handsome, damaged naval officer who gives Margot a job—and also a reason to question everything she thought she knew about where her true loyalties should lie. Against the backdrop of one of the most significant events of the century, a delicate web of lies obscures the line between the casualties of war and of the heart, making trust a luxury that no one can afford.

After the worldwide success of The World Book of Happiness and The World Book of Love, author Leo Bormans has spent two years studying the scientific research on hope and meeting the most prominent experts in the field. Hope is not a luxury of the privileged few. It represents a universal psychological resource that can be found in all corners of the world. Hope is all of this: a tool for envisioning definable goals, a coping resource, an expression of trust and openness as well as a spiritual gift earned by faith or ritual. In the course of a lifetime every individual is apt to experience these different shades of hope. The World Book of Hope is an inspiring quest to the breadth and depth of hope. It offers a universal framework for understanding and using the most powerful tool of mankind: hope. Without hope there is no life. In this book, 100 professional researchers from all over the world share what we know about hope. Not spiritual philosophy but evidence based knowledge of recent experiments and life-long research, set in a language everybody understands. This book unveils the secret power of hope in love and relationships, study and work, health and illness, education and care, freedom and prison, management and leadership, therapy and economy, youth and old age. It even shows how we can make pessimism work and how we can benefit from post-traumatic growth: one door closes, another one opens. AUTHOR: Leo Bormans is a journalist, writer and public speaker. For more than twenty years, he was the chief editor of the school magazines Klasse and Yeti. At present, he travels around the world as the Ambassador of Happiness & Quality of Life. SELLING POINTS: * A record of worldwide scientific research on hope * Including a selection of ten of the world's most hopeful projects * Full of inspiring examples 75 colour and 50 b/w images Also available: The World Book of Love ISBN 9789401422741

Elie Wiesel called the genocide of the Armenians during the First World War ‘the Holocaust before the Holocaust’. Around one and a half million Armenians - men, women and children – were slaughtered at the time of the First World War. This book outlines some of the historical facts and consequences of the massacres but sees it as its main objective to present the Armenians to the foreign reader, their history but also their lives and achievements in the present that finds most Armenians dispersed throughout the world. 3000 years after their appearance in history, 1700 years after adopting Christianity and almost 90 years after the greatest catastrophe in their history, these 50 ‘biographical sketches of intellectuals, artists, journalists, and others...produce a complicated kaleidoscope of a divided but lively people that is trying once again, to rediscover its ethnic coherence. Armenian civilization does not consist solely of stories about a far-off past, but also of traditions and a national conscience suggestive of a future that will transcend the present.’ [from the Preface]