Among the essayists, John Templeton gives his own optimistic view of the future and the world economy, focusing on declining trade barriers and the spread of free markets. Ruth Stafford Peale describes the future of philanthropy and charity. Dr. Denton A. Cooley, the renowned heart surgeon, tells of the stunning advances in medicine. The Reverend Dr. Theodore M. Hesburgh, president emeritus of the University of Notre Dame, shows the directions education must take. Dr. Armand M. Nicholi Jr., clinical psychologist at Harvard University Medical School, tells how to combat the stresses threatening families today.
 

“John Marks Templeton has achieved exemplary success in both business and philanthropy. For Looking Forward he has assembled a diverse and remarkable group of experts in their fields—including the environment, medicine, the physical sciences, religion, the family, and international relations—and contributed two stellar pieces as well. Together these essays dispel fashionable pessimism and show how the world can progress—and is progressing—toward a better future.” —Rupert Murdoch
 

“Looking Forward celebrates the triumph of the human spirit at the dawn of a new millennium. In his usual thorough way, Sir John brings together the best thinking of the best minds of our time and, in the process, conveys his own incorrigible optimism and fervent belief in our essential spirituality.” —J. Peter Grace Chairman, W.R. Grace & Company

As a pioneer in both financial investments and philanthropy, Sir John Templeton spent a lifetime encouraging open-mindedness. Templeton started his Wall Street career in 1937 and went on to create some of the world’s largest and most successful international investment funds, eventually earning the label of “arguably the greatest global stock picker of the century” from Money magazine. In 1972, he established the world’s largest annual award given to an individual: the £1,000,000 Templeton Prize. The Prize is intended to recognize exemplary achievement in work related to life’s spiritual dimension. Templeton also contributed a sizable amount of his fortune to the John Templeton Foundation, which he established in 1987. Templeton passed away in 2008, but the Foundation that bears his name continues to award millions of dollars in annual grants in pursuit of its mission to serve as a philanthropic catalyst for research on what scientists and philosophers call the “big questions.”