International Peace Month

In 1926 August was proclaimed International Peace Month at the International Democratic Peace Conference. There are many ways to observe International Peace Month. This selection of books will guide you towards peace in your relationships, inner peace and a way to protest peacefully.

Communication

Nonviolent Communication: a language of life by Marshall B. Rosenberg

Enrich your personal and work relationships with the art of compassionate communication. What if you could defuse tension and create accord in even the most volatile situations just by changing the way you speak? Over the past 35 years, Marshall Rosenberg has done just that, peacefully resolving conflicts in families, schools, businesses, and governments in 30 countries on 5 continents.

Resolving Conflict by Gregory Tillett and Brendan French

Conflict is an inevitable and pervasive aspect of our lives, occurring between individuals, in families and communities, in businesses and between nations. Resolving Conflict draws on the latest developments in research and practice and explores a wide range of human conflict situations.

Speak Peace in a World of Conflict: what you say next will change your world by Marshall B. Rosenberg

In every interaction, every conversation and in every thought, you have a choice – to promote peace or perpetuate violence. International peacemaker, mediator and healer, Dr. Marshall B. Rosenberg shows you how the language you use is the key to enriching life. Take the first step to reduce violence, heal pain, resolve conflicts and spread peace on our planet – by developing an internal consciousness of peace rooted in the language you use each day.

Mindfulness and Meditation

The Miracle of Mindfulness by Thích Nhâât Hòanh

In this boook master of Zen meditation and one of the world’s most respected Zen Buddhist monks, Thich Nhat Hanh offers practical advice on how to bring mindfulness into your daily life. He explains the benefits of mindfulness and that even your daily activities can be a form of meditation. He combines practical exercises with candid tales to help you find peace within.

Practicing Peace in Times of War by Pema Chödrön

With war and violence flaring all over the world, many of us are left feeling vulnerable and utterly helpless. In this book Pema Chödrön draws on Buddhist teachings to explore the origins of aggression, hatred, and war, explaining that they lie nowhere but within our own hearts and minds. She goes on to explain that the way in which we as individuals respond to challenges in our everyday lives can either perpetuate a culture of violence or create a new culture of compassion.

Black Women’s Yoga History: memoirs of inner peace by Stephanie Y. Evans

How have Black women elders managed stress? In Black Women’s Yoga History, Stephanie Y. Evans uses primary sources to answer that question and to show how meditation and yoga from eras of enslavement, segregation, and migration to the Civil Rights, Black Power, and New Age movements have been in existence all along.  In more than fifty yoga memoirs, Black women discuss practices of reflection, exercise, movement, stretching, visualization, and chanting for self-care. By unveiling the depth of a struggle for wellness, memoirs offer lessons for those who also struggle to heal from personal, cultural, and structural violence. This intellectual history expands conceptions of yoga and defines inner peace as mental health, healing, and wellness that is both compassionate and political.

Peace and Protests

This is an Uprising: how nonviolent revolt is shaping the twenty-first century by Mark Engler

Although it continues to prove its importance in political life, the strategic use of nonviolent action is poorly understood. Nonviolence is usually studied as a philosophy or moral code, rather than as a method of political conflict, disruption, and escalation. This is an Uprising corrects this oversight. It argues that if we are always taken by surprise by dramatic outbreaks of revolt, and if we decline to incorporate them into our view of how societies progress, then we pass up the chance to fully grasp a critical phenomenon-and to harness its power to create lasting change.

Non-Violent Resistance (Satyagraha) by Mahatma Gandhi

Mohandas Gandhi gained the deep respect and admiration of people worldwide with both his unwavering struggle for truth and justice and his philosophy of non-violent resistance — a philosophy that led India to independence and that was later taken up by the American civil rights movement. This volume presents Gandhi’s own clear and consistent vision of that philosophy, which he calls Satyagraha — literally, “holding on to the truth.” Through Satyagraha, one brings about change by appealing to the reason and conscience of the opponent and puts an end to evil by converting the evil-doer.

The Power of Nonviolence: writings by advocates of peace by Howard Zinn

The Power of Nonviolence, the first anthology of alternatives to war with a historical perspective, with an introduction by Howard Zinn about September 11 and the U.S. response to the terrorist attacks, presents the most salient and persuasive arguments for peace in the last 2,500 years of human history.  Arranged chronologically, covering the major conflagrations in the world, The Power of Nonviolence is a compelling step forward in the study of pacifism, a timely anthology that fills a void for people looking for responses to crisis that are not based on guns or bombs.