The Signals of Transcendence

Os Guinness is an author and social critic. Great-great-great grandson of Arthur Guinness, the Dublin brewer, he was born in China in World War 2 where his parents were medical missionaries. A witness to the climax of the Chinese revolution in 1949, he was expelled with many other foreigners in 1951 and returned to Europe where he was educated in England. He completed his undergraduate degree at the University of London and his DPhil in the social sciences from Oriel College, Oxford. Os has written or edited more than 30 books, including The Call, Time for Truth, Unspeakable, A Free People’s Suicide, The Global Public Square, Last Call for Liberty, Carpe Diem Redeemed, The Magna Carta of Humanity and The Great Quest: Invitation to the Examined Life and a Sure Path to Meaning. His latest book is Signals of Transcendence. Since moving to the United States in 1984, Os has been a Guest Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Studies, a Guest Scholar and Visiting Fellow at the Brookings Institution, and Senior Fellow at the Trinity Forum and the EastWest Institute in New York. He was the lead drafter of the Williamsburg Charter in 1988, a celebration of the bicentennial of the U.S. Constitution, and later of “The Global Charter of Conscience,” which was published at the European Union Parliament in 2012. Os has spoken at many of the world’s major universities, and he’s spoken widely to political and business conferences across the world. He lives with his wife Jenny in the Washington, D.C. area.