David Aikman

For more than two decades David Aikman watched world history unfold before his eyes. From his unique position as senior foreign correspondent for Time Magazine, Aikman was assigned to stories that only an elite group of journalists were privileged to cover. As a Christian believer, he brought an added ... (more)dimension to his reporter's notebook as he observed the rise and fall of nations, the tragedy of war, and the extraordinary acts of good and evil that indelibly mark and mar human history. His writings not only provide readers with eyewitness accounts of modern world history, but with astute spiritual observations drawing important lessons from the lives of the history makers. In the introduction to Great Souls, David Aikman writes, "What has struck me as a reporter for most of my adult life is the capacity of individual human beings again and again to rise above their times and their circumstances and to change, if only just a little, the direction of human tide." The life and times of just such individuals provide the subject material for Great Souls—Six Who Changed the Century. The author explores the historical background, the family experiences and the cultural settings that surrounded Billy Graham, Mother Teresa, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Nelson Mandela, Pope John Paul II, and Elie Wiesel. To these profiles, Aikman adds his personal perspectives—drawn from conversations, interviews, and inside stories—to breathe energy and truth into every page. David Aikman comments, "Like most readers of biographies throughout history, I have always personally been inspired by the lives of great people. It is hard not to be energized by the stories of how individuals have risen above adversity or suffering, or have maintained a purity in the face of great temptation. Our age, with its habit of instant judgment of a man or woman's life based on the fragmentary and proverbial sound-byte, is often impatient with detail, nuance, and depth." It is the good fortune of the reader that Great Souls is blessed with those very attributes—detail, nuance, and depth. These, enlivened by the author's gifted writing, render it an unprecedented biographical collection. —from the publisher's website