Reviewed by David Lorimer

Seeds of Hope

This is a hugely inspirational book, bringing together the lives and work of a hundred great figures of the 20^th century. The book is divided into three main parts: ecological, social and spiritual visionaries. Two pages are devoted to each figure, with a photo and representative quotations on the left, and a short essay in two columns on the right. This severe limitation makes it imperative to extract only the essential features of the life and work of the person under consideration, so the book reads like a biographical Encyclopaedia. Its great strength lies not only in a wide variety of entries, but also in the quality of the writers themselves. The average reader would be familiar with perhaps half of the personalities (I myself did not know a dozen of them) so there is a huge amount not only to learn but also to be reminded of.

The best way of giving an idea of the book’s scope is to list a few entries. Ecological visionaries include Rachel Carson, James Lovelock, Arne Naess, Vandana Shiva, David Abram, Donella Meadows, Wendell Berry, Sir Albert Howard, Mary Midgley, Ted Hughes, Lady Eve Balfour, Jane Goodall, Thomas Berry, Lynn Margulis, Wangari Maathai, The Prince of Wales and even David Bohm and Peter Kropotkin. The entry on Rupert Sheldrake is written by Chris Clarke while Peter Bunyard writes about Teddy Goldsmith. Among the social visionaries are Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Anita Roddick, Maurice Ash, Buckminster Fuller, Erich Fromm, Keynes, Ivan Illich, Albert Schweitzer and Frank Lloyd Wright. Ilya Prigogine also appears in this section, which makes one wonder if there should have been a separate section for scientific visionaries, which might also have included Brian Goodwin. Spiritual visionaries feature The Dalai Lama, Krishnamurti, Deepak Chopra, Kathleen Raine, Tagore, Desmond Tutu, Thomas Merton, Jung, Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Thomas Merton, Raimon Panikkar and Bede Griffiths. Some of the entries are written by biographers. All in all this is a remarkable selection, a tribute to the vision of the editors. Further information is given on the writers and visionaries at the back, although the Prince of Wales’s web site is a notable omission. Among the many interesting nuggets to be found in the book is a quotation by Keynes about Schumacher, with whom he had been corresponding: ‘if my mantle is to fall on anyone, it could only be Otto Clarke or Fritz Schumacher. Clarke can do anything with figures, but Schumacher can make them sing.’

As a Resurgence anthology, the themes and subjects naturally accord with those of the magazine. The visionaries stood out against the consumerist, militarist and materialistic trends of the age, ‘keeping the torch of humanity burning, giving hope to millions, and restoring confidence in the enduring human qualities of compassion, generosity, harmony, reverence and peace.’ As the editors point out, they also achieved concrete results in terms of social justice and the development of sustainable lifestyles. This is an immensely important book for young people to read as they shape their own view of the world and the future and can draw inspiration from those who have gone before them to help co-create a more peaceful and co-operative world where human beings live in harmony with the rest of nature.