On the Tail of a Comet: The Life of Frank Buchman

This definitive biography of Frank Buchman starts with a small-town American who set out "to remake the world" and in the attempt affected the moral and spiritual condition of thousands of people at every level of society throughout the world. From the rise of black nationalist independence movements in Africa to the civil rights hotbed in the U.S., in the lives of great leaders such as Mahatma Gandhi, Konrad Adenauer, and Harry Truman -- Buchman's remarkable influence kept turning up. Buchman was called "a man of genius" and an "apostle to the twentieth century" by Henry van Dusen in the "Atlantic Monthly." He was founder of the Oxford Group and Moral Re-Armament, and the man whose ideas provided the impetus behind many change-oriented initiatives such as Alcoholics Anonymous. Buchman's biographer, Garth Lean, was a British journalist and prolific author. He held a masters degree in jurisprudence from Oxford University, and was a lifelong student of history. Among his books is "God's Politician," a biographical study of William Wilberforce.