A survivor of the violence and famine of Mao Zedong’s totalitarian Cultural Revolution, the dream-crushing violence at Tiananmen Square, and the rise of China’s market economy, He grew up in an atheist society devoid of spirituality. After years as an economist, entrepreneur and NGO director, He retired to Maryland in 2015 with some heavy questions on his mind: “What kind of life is really worth living? Is there any other option for human life aside from the modern grind of forced busyness, manipulation by online advertisements, and hatred and violence generated and directed by those who form public opinion? Can we find a way to make human life return to its former graceful and dignified pace, make it encourage inquiring, independent thinking, peaceful communication, mutual respect and philosophical exchange, and connection to the divine source of ‘the human calling’?”

To find the answers, Daofeng He traced the growing dysfunction of humankind’s alienation by examining the rise and fall of the world’s great civilizations and their religious, philosophical, economic and political histories. His intellectual journey led him to a startling conclusion—the calling of Christianity. “My new faith shattered my unreasonable expectation to find absolute truth in the Eastern sages who preached that morality was relative. It also cut off the path to the materialistic gods of the new, moneyed East.”

THE HUMAN CALLING is the book we need right now to illuminate our shared human history and provide answers as to how we can start creating a better world for everyone.