What do you do when your world falls apart? Panic? Despair? Or repair?

Augustine and Ataturk, a fifth-century African and a 20th-century Turk, each faced an empire's end. Each created, from the wreckage swirling around him, a lifeboat for his people.

They teach us how to focus our lives to achieve maximum results, for ourselves and for those who count on us.

Thomas C. Smedley, PhD, brings a technical writer's perspective to the social scientist's task. Decades of studying social collapses and regenerations come together in this study. Using literary criticism and computer-aided content analysis, Smedley sifts out common imperatives shared by world changers