Brewers, Bankers, Ministers, and Missionaries.When the first Arthur Guinness sunk his savings into a dilapidated brewery on the banks of the River Liffey he could not have foreseen the brewing and banking empires that would emerge.

But Guinness also delt in another kind of spirit, producing a third empire of extraordinary explorers, missionaries, clerics, and social entrepreneurs. They challenged the appalling poverty in the London East End where they set up maternity homes, clinics, night schools, and soup kitchens. Their hair-raising exploits in unknown lands, risking death and disease, fearlessly confronting Western governments and royalty over the mistreatment of the native inhabitants, changed the face of the world in which they lived.

Using diaries, letters, and research, hitherto unknown to the public, Michele Guinness skillfully weaves an inspiring family saga out of its three strands, which with its mighty achievements and bitter disappointments, its love stories and losses, it's triumph and heart-breaking tragedies, is more extraordinary than any work of fiction.