The collection of lectures and publications from the Schumacher Center for a New Economics represents some of the foremost voices on a new economics.

Writer, editor, ecologist, and activist, Stephanie Mills has been involved with matters ecological, bioregional, social, and political for over thirty years. Although her books and essays have largely fallen under the rubric of nature writing, she presents here a portrait of Robert Swann, co-founder in 1980 of the Schumacher Center and its president until shortly before his death in January 2003. Focusing on his life-long active nonviolence, participation in the civil rights movement, and introduction into this country of the community land trust, Mills describes how Swann became an inspiring spokesman for community economics and was instrumental in advancing a community-based economic movement that continues to grow. She is eloquent in her portrayal of  Swann as "a visionary of the here and now."