publications
At cultures of peace, we believe that good ideas deserve to live beyond the meeting room or classroom.
This page is home to books, writing, and resources that grow from our work: practical, trustworthy, and made to be used.
A Time for Peace: A Paradigm Shift and Practical Guide
by Dr. Preston Lindsay
We often think of peace as the absence of war. Peace is far more than the absence of violence—it is the presence of healthy systems, strong relationships, and communities designed for belonging.
In A Time for Peace, Dr. Preston Lindsay offers both a paradigm shift and a practical guide for building what scholars call positive peace: cultures and infrastructures that actively nurture trust, connection, and human flourishing. Drawing on his PhD in Peace and Conflict Studies and his work in measuring positive peace, Lindsay translates complex theory into accessible, everyday practice.
Peace, he argues, has a cadence. It is built slowly, like a garden. It requires preparation, patience, and care. Through conversations on non-violence, interconnection, silence, grief, spatial design, and compassionate communication, Lindsay shows how peace can take root in our homes, neighborhoods, and cities.
The book explores how the spaces we inhabit—light, greenery, sound, walkability, access to nature—shape our capacity for connection. It addresses how grief, if unprocessed, deepens division, and how silence and deep listening can become transformative tools for reconciliation. It offers practical frameworks for curating connection, practicing compassionate speech, and fostering belonging across difference.
At a time marked by polarization, loneliness, and systemic strain, A Time for Peace offers a grounded path forward. Not through grand ideological battles, but through the steady, human work of listening first, tending relationships, and reshaping the environments that shape us.
There is no hero coming to save us. There is only the quiet, courageous work of peacebuilding. This book invites readers to step into that work—with gentleness, clarity, and hope.
-
-
Publisher: J.P. Zenger Books
Publication Date: March 7, 2026
Print Length: 141 Pages
Language: English -
Dr. Preston Lindsay is a peacebuilder, scholar, and practitioner specializing in positive peace, infrastructures and cultures of peace, and spatial peace. He holds a PhD in Peace and Conflict Studies, where his research focused on measuring positive peace and translating peace theory into tangible, community-level impact.
Dr. Lindsay is one of the founding members of Cultures of Peace, a program of Born Brown Institute; an organization dedicated to fostering places of healing, reconciliation, and belonging. His work bridges academic research and real-world application, helping communities understand how peace is shaped not only by policy and politics, but also by the environments we inhabit, the relationships we cultivate, and the ways we listen to one another.
His scholarship includes contributions to the Palgrave Handbook of Positive Peace, where he co-developed measurable indicators across political, cultural, economic, and urban systems to assess and strengthen positive peace. He has also written on spatial peace and the influence of light, nature, sound, and urban design on human connection and conflict.
Drawing from traditions as diverse as Indigenous frameworks of relationality, Buddhist interbeing, Quaker silence, and contemporary peace research, Dr. Lindsay’s work centers on the lived experience of belonging. He is passionate about making peace practical—offering tools communities can use to deepen trust, foster dialogue, and build systems that serve human flourishing.
Through teaching, writing, and community engagement, he continues to explore how societies can move beyond negative peace toward resilient, measurable, and enduring cultures of positive peace.
-
J. P. Zenger Books publishes books that deserve to exist.
We’re a small, independent imprint dedicated to bringing forward works that might otherwise go unheard—ideas that challenge, stories that resonate, voices that endure. Our focus is simple: publish books that matter, with the care and conviction they deserve.
Overlooked: Black Ministers in a White Denomination
by Sue Ditmire
For more than seventy years, Black ministers served, built congregations, founded schools, led communities, and preached the Gospel within the Swedenborgian Church. Yet much of their story was forgotten.
In Overlooked, historian and archivist Sue Ditmire, brings these lives back into view. Drawing on church records, convention journals, letters, newspapers, and personal interviews, she reconstructs the remarkable stories of twelve Black Swedenborgian ministers whose contributions were often minimized, misunderstood, or erased from the historical record.
Their work unfolded against the backdrop of slavery’s legacy, Jim Crow segregation, the Great Migration, and the Civil Rights Movement. They established churches, educated children and adults, advocated for their communities, and navigated the complex realities of serving in a denomination that publicly embraced inclusion while often failing to recognize their leadership fully.
Neither indictment nor apology, Overlooked is a deeply researched examination of race, religion, and memory in American life. It reveals how institutions can overlook those doing some of their most important work—and how recovering these stories can help us better understand both our past and our present.
At once a work of church history, African American history, and moral reckoning, Overlooked offers an essential contribution to the ongoing conversation about faith, justice, and belonging in America.
-
-
Publisher: J.P. Zenger Books
Publication Date: June 23, 2026
Print Length: 402 Pages
Language: English -
Sue Ditmire has been a member of the Swedenborgian Church of North America for over 50 years. She has been active on both local and national levels, which includes founding the Swedenborgian Heritage Center in Cincinnati, where she currently resides. Her passion for social activism and the arts have led her to become involved with the Swedenborgians in Action Against Racism and proudly serves on the Board of the Eckstein Cultural Art Center in Cincinnati.
Ditmire was originally enrolled in secretarial school which led to her being recruited to work for the US Government in Washington, D.C., in 1969. After marrying her first husband, she and her family moved to rural Ohio and lived on a farm. She then worked with computers at Cincinnati General Hospital before moving to South New Jersey where she worked varied jobs including bookkeeping. She received her AAS in Accounting and continued working as a bookkeeper eventually meeting her second husband at a foreign car shop where she worked.
In 2001, Ditmire began a 20-year battle with an undiagnosed medical illness leaving her physically disabled with limited ability to work. When her health improved, she started to build New Jersey history websites for the American Local History Network. Upon finally receiving proper diagnosis and proper medication, Ditmire retired back to Ohio where she reconnected with her passion for historical research and writing.
Overlooked: Black Ministers in a White Denomination is Ditmire’s first historical non-fiction, sparked by the death of George Floyd and the subsequent Black Lives Matter movement in 2013 “as we were challenged to examine our own histories of race relations.”
-
J. P. Zenger Books publishes books that deserve to exist.
We’re a small, independent imprint dedicated to bringing forward works that might otherwise go unheard—ideas that challenge, stories that resonate, voices that endure. Our focus is simple: publish books that matter, with the care and conviction they deserve.
more publications from our community are on the way!
Check back here as our work continues to grow.