Active Hope: How to Face the Mess We’re in with Unexpected Resilience and Creative Power Paperback – 11 Aug. 2022

I could have saved myself years of depression had I discovered this book before now. It is incredibly supportive and informative in all ways offering a vital resource for this present moment and for the challenges we can expect in the future. I found this book fascinating, along with the resources section and the invitation of wonderful guided exercises throughout the book. It has completely changed my outlook and my wellbeing, from despair to positivity. I now have acquired skills to embrace pain felt for the world and let it go so that active hope can enter and thrive whilst giving valued recognition and steps towards healing our shared existence. I am profoundly grateful to Chris Johnstone and Joanna Macy for leading the way.

This is the book for anyone who has awakened in the night worrying about the present state of the world, or felt the need to close their eyes or ears to the news from TV and newspapers. This book carries a powerful and encouraging message in an easy to read form. It combines the considerable wisdom, expertise and experience of both authors in helping us cope with the recent overwhelming crises in an accessible way. It is both realistic and inspiring. It validates the distress many people feel when facing the problems of the environmental and economic crises, but also suggests ways we can play our unique part in bringing about positive change. I intend to give copies of it to all my friends!!

'Active Hope' is truly a gift to humanity at this crisis point in our collective history. This book succinctly describes the 'Business as Usual' model, which is systematically destroying the resilience of human cultures and the Earth's ecosystems, and yet offers an extraordinary vision of hope - the Great Turning towards a life-sustaining society, in which millions of people globally are now participating.Holding the daily awareness of this precipice at which we stand requires enormous courage. This book offers clear insights and a tried-and-tested system to help us to develop the inner resources to cope. It feels like the most trusty companion anyone aspiring to co-create a sustainable future could acquire.

Active Hope is a book for everyone.Instead of just bemoaning the state of the world, Joanne Macy and Chris Johnstone offer a heart warming way to improve our own lives and those of others. Those of us that tend to get overwhelmed by the sheer size of the problems we face and become frozen into inactivity will find a wealth of comfort and sound practical advice.The invitation of this book is to stop being overwhelmed and start living in a way that makes a difference even if it's small. The first steps in any journey are the most important.

This is an absolutely incredible book. It is enlivened and enlivening, deeply insightful and rigorously researched. Someone asked not, after I mentioned it, whether 'Actiof Hoq' was a self-help book. To me 'self-help' suggests egocentrism and individualism. That's not where Macy and Johnstone are coming from. Though starting from the individual, it is a work ultimately offering the guidance and tools for collective transformation. An absolute must-read for anyone passionate about the the world, or anyone who struggles with burnout or a sense of powerlessness.

I can't recommend Active Hope highly enough. As someone who constantly felt depressed, frightened or in numb denial about the multiple crises facing humanity and life on earth, this book helped me reengage and reconnect with nature and other people, and draw from them a sense of joy and enthusiasm. Active Hope is about knowing you've done the best you can, no matter what the eventual outcome. It encourages you to be part of the Great Turning, from a consumerist to a sustainable way of life for us all. Published in 2012, this book is incredibly timely. Thank goodness for Joanna Macy!

Thinking about buying this book, then do it! This is the information and tools we need right here and now. It has been written in an open, easy to read non jargon way too. It feels like a gentle teacher is informatively guiding you through very straight forwardly how things are and what we can choose to think/feel/do about it. Like some books I don't come away feeling guilty that I'm not doing more or that what I'm presently doing is wrong its more of an 'oh yes that's a good idea, now I understand!'If you facilitate any of 'The Work That Re-connects' (see 'Coming Back to Life') its a must have to bring greater clarity and understanding which you can pass on to the participants.I love it and I'm recommending it to as many people as I can

One quiet weekend in a CIA office, someone decided to try an experiment to see how gullible people are, and at the same time create a 'person of influence' among the intelligensia using one of their former operatives...hence the 'ecophilosopher' Joanna Macy was born. And a network of people are trained to run candle-lit groups on her book. If you want something better than this hobbit-like analysis ("The great turning") then try Michael Parenti. And check out Gimbernat's Lust for Reverence, or Joshua Greene's Moral Tribes, or Popovic's Blueprint for Revolution.