"This is an exciting and visionary book, showing why an age of culture is necessary and how it can be achieved." -- Biserka Cvjeticanin, Director, Culturelink/Institute for Development and International Relations.

"Paul Schafer believes that we are standing at the threshold of a new era of global development and human affairs that should be driven by a holistic cultural perspective." -- Robert Palmer, former Director of Democratic Governance, Culture, and Diversity at the Council of Europe.

"Paul Schafer's vision of the centrality of culture to our lives, to societal development, and to the future of civilization has shaped policy development at the local, national, and international levels over the past four decades. His message cannot be ignored." -- Joyce Zemans, York University.

In this ground-breaking work, cultural scholar D. Paul Schafer draws on a lifetime of research and reflection to consider the implications of what he calls the cultural world view and the promise it holds for a more humane and fulfilling future.

Arguing that the current world system is overly dominated by economic ways of thinking about and acting within the world, Schafer considers what would be the prerequisites for a cultural age, the ways in which a cultural age would transform patterns of human life, and the advances in human fulfilment that the adoption of such an age and its associated values would bring.

Since the first international conference on cultural policy was held in Venice in 1970, culture has grown to be of increasing interest and importance to nations and individuals alike. Delegates at the 2013 International Conference on Culture in Hangzhou, China, declared cultural issues to be central to sustainable development, with a later session initiated by the UN's General Assembly placing culture squarely at the centre of the sustainability agenda.

In less than fifty years, culture has moved from being seen as a peripheral activity in the world to being utterly indispensable to the achievement of vital social and developmental goals. It is now apparent that culture (and by this is meant culture in the broadest sense, as the sum of human experience and achievement) is intimated connected to all the world's most pressing problems -- and may hold the solution to many of them.

Such problems are legion in today's world: climate change, glaring inequalities in the distribution of wealth and income, resource depletion, and conflicts between different nations, ethnic groups, and individuals. None of these problems can be addressed effectively, much less resolved, without recourse to the holistic, all-encompassing perspective that culture provides. Narrow views no longer suffice, and the status quo is unacceptable.

Paul Schafer has spent much of his life wrestling with these problems and demonstrating why culture has a crucial role to play in coming to grips with them. We ignore the book's timely, urgent, yet ultimately hopeful message at our peril.

Illuminating issues centering on the subject of peace, this collection of rich ideas by leading intellectuals is intended to empower readers with the awareness of how subtle shifts in attitudes and behaviors can help attain and sustain a culture of peace. Fourteen contributors from diverse backgrounds and a vast range of perspectives and experience present their thoughts on how to create and foster a global culture of peace while enhancing an understanding of interrelated topics such as personal empowerment, gender issues, conflict resolution, gang intervention, value-creating education, and internationalism. Contributors include Anwarul K. Chowdhury, ambassador to the United Nations for Bangladesh; Betty Williams, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize; Jeffrey D. Sachs, director of the Earth Institute; and David Krieger, founder and president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

Will humanity survive the coming century? Are we threatened by a demographic time-bomb? Will there be food for all? Can we eliminate poverty? Are we, in our cities, heading for a kind of apartheid between the affluent and the socially excluded? Will new information technologies increase the gap between rich and poor - or, on the contrary, open up opportunities for lifelong distance education for all? Are women going to win their legitimate place in society? Is it true that many languages are in danger of extinction? How can we forestall global warming and the onward march of the world's deserts? Will there be wars over access to shrinking supplies of water? What are the prospects of running out of affordable oil and gas; and can we harness solar energy? This book looks at the major challenges of the future. Packed with the latest information and scientific understandings, it traverses a rich tapestry of crucial issues, threats and choices confronting humanity and proposes a new start based on four broad contracts: social, natural, cultural and ethical. In a world where problems are taking on increasingly global dimensions, we must come up with global solutions. We need to turn a culture of violence into a culture of peace. The choice is stark: either a 21st century with a human face or the grimacing mask of a 'Brave New World'.

The author looks forward to a time when the civilization of war will be replaced by a culture of peace, based on a culture of democracy; a world where individuals work and create and invent the texture of their lives in their local communities, freed from the fears of the war-culture. Nelson Mandela, F.W. De Klerk, Yasser Arafat and Mikhail Gorbachev are used as examples of people who are moving forward and challenging routine and the system. The author argues that to write a new page we must re-dedicate ourselves to the ethical force of peace rather than the coercive force of war. Only by striving for a new renaissance locally, nationally, and internationally, can perceptions and actions determine the shape of things to come.