Jewish

Words like innovate, change, and adapt can be inspirational or the agent of doom for our well-being, depending on your perspective. In Trees on Mars: Our Obsession with the Future, Hal Niedzviecki takes us on a ride through the technology & ideas which promise that we can "win the future", giving us a penetrating look at the consequences of our mad rush "forward".

Susan Silberstein is author of Kitchen Chemotherapy and a number of other books & publications, and she is the founder & educational director of the Center for Advancement in Cancer Education (beatcancer.org).

It's almost trite to say that we can transform the world through education of our children, but Mara Sapon-Shevin does it for real. In her book Widening the Circle: The Power of Inclusive Classrooms, Mara lays it all out, including the real-life evidence of how we can foster a better world for all in how we teach our kids. Be ready to find new vistas in thought beyond the traditional paradigm(s).

Reese Erlich is an award winning journalist and author, and a frequent visitor to the Middle East over the past 10+ years. We start with a talk he gave at FNVW about Libya & Syria and the Arab Spring, and continue on to an visit with Reese addressing his goals in seeking out truth, starting from his organizing against Vietnam.

Steve Horn photographed throughout the former Yugoslavia in 1970, not returning with his camera until 2003, after the war in Bosnia. He documented the before and after of war and was able to take back to the people a slice of their pre-war past nearly lost. With his book, Pictures Without Borders - Bosnia Revisited, Steve teaches us to know our global neighbors. Raised in a Jewish family, Steve is a long-time resident of Lopez Island, Washington.

Carl Bunin is founder of PeaceButtons.info, and he's provided over 110,000 peace buttons to the world (plus lots of other stuff) and he provides a "This Week in Peace & Social Justice" email newsletter, mapping out the movements and actions that have produced remarkable changes in the last century. Formerly on the front of demonstrations, teach-ins, and the like, Carl now does his bit for the peace movement from a wheelchair, due to MS, but it's hardly slowed him down at all.

Noa Baum is an Israeli-born woman now living in the USA who has found her avocation in telling stories, who came to my attention through her one-woman story-telling show called A Land Twice Promised, about the personal stories of people vying for or sharing the land variously called Israel or Palestine. Stories can change hearts and find a way forward in places where argument is powerless or counterproductive, so Noa's very personal sharing may light for us a more peaceful way forward in a very troubled world.

Peter Edelman's new book is So Rich, So Poor: Why It's So Hard to End Poverty in America, and he brings great credentials an passion to the concern. As an aide to Senator Robert Kennedy, having servied in Washington in various posts, including the one he resigned from during the Clinton administration in protest of the "welfare reform" that Clinton signed, he knows the nuts & bolts as well as the mechanics of government.