In this inspirational discourse, scholar Sarah Wider and Buddhist leader Daisaku Ikeda celebrate the great spiritual and literary figures, East and West, who have inspired their own work as
educators, poets, and peace builders, including both the men and the women of the American Renaissance. They reserve their highest praise, though, for the lesser-known influences, especially
teachers and mothers, whose humble, compassionate actions provide the truest foundation for the realization of ever-greater peace. Ultimately, the book is a tribute to the bonds that give life
meaning. These bonds are the ones built between friends and family; those who teach and those we might learn from; with the great thinkers of the past who live on in books, poetry, and art;
with nature; and most of all with the best version of ourselves.
