Summary

The author writes of traveling to Ukraine in the winter of 2015 to address the Ukrainian parliament, a speech that he intended as a rallying cry for them to continue resisting the deepening influence of Vladimir Putin and Russia. He describes flying over Ireland and recalling the words and influence of his Irish grandfather, who urged him to keep the faith and to keep moving forward. "We Irish,” the author says, “are the only people in the world who are actually nostalgic about the future” (250).

The author also describes the ongoing successes he realized in his three major projects – Ukraine, Iraq, and Northern South America – and his hope that those successes form the foundations of ongoing stability. He comments on how the results of work such as his are rarely seen until years, perhaps decades after the work is done, and how it is essential...