In this book 92 people share their personal discoveries resulting from an encounter with Initiatives of Change or its predecessor Moral Re-Armament. ‘Remarkable stories,’ writes Rajmohan Gandhi in the foreword, ‘revealing the hope-giving things that happen when human beings obey nudges from an inner director, an inner source of wisdom-cum-strength.’

‘Making history is not the monopoly of the rich and powerful,’ asserts the author Jens Jonathan Wilhelmsen. His new book draws on a lifetime working for change.

When Richard was asked if he would like to write his story for this series of booklets, he demurred. He didn’t feel he had enough to tell. But I think it is a classic tale of how an ordinary chap can do extraordinary things – if he’s prepared to be guided by God – resulting in recognition by the Queen for ‘services to the community’.

In Great Company Michael Smith argues that, far from the ends justifying the means, the means actually determine the ends. Dishonest and acquisitive means in the events that led up to the crash of 2008 led to disastrous outcome.

After service with the Indian Army in France in the First World War, when he was awarded the Military Cross, Loudon Hamilton went up to Oxford and took a two-year philosophy course. Towards the end of that time, in May 1921, Dr Frank Buchman paid his first visit to Oxford. One evening he was a guest in Loudon Hamilton's rooms in Christ Church at a meeting of the Beef and Beer Club. Out of this grew the Oxford Group, now known as Moral Re-Armament.

Ever struggled to explain what Initiatives of Change is? This new booklet will help!

A new book on Frank Buchman, The Spiritual Vision of Frank Buchman, has just been published by Pennsylvania State University Press. It is written by Philip Boobbyer, a history lecturer at the University of Kent in the UK, who is known to many in Initiatives of Change. The book focuses on Buchman's ideas and spirituality, and has separate chapters on the origins of Buchman's thinking, guidance, personal work, theological questions, strategy and organization, and politics and ideology.

The story of Elsa Vogel, 88, born illegitimate in France, who survived being machine-gunned at 18 in Paris, and full of hate for the Germans. She met two young women and asked them: 'I have a faith, I go to church and I pray regularly. What is it that you have – and I don’t?'

Graham Turner explores the power that can be found in silence through interviewing monastics, religious leaders, composers, actors, psychotherapists, prisoners and peace workers about their experiences of practising silence. Ranging from Christian contemplation in the Egyptian desert to Vipassana meditation in India, from the shared silence of Quaker meetings in Oxford to the profound stillness of the Alps, this is a powerful book about a great gap in modern human awareness.