Jack Canfield is a motivational speaker and writer who has spent three decades getting people to think positively. His books of compiled stories, known as Chicken Soup for the Soul, inspire people and help them reach their goals. The series of self-help books have been phenomenally successful, with over 100 million copies in print, in nearly four dozen languages.

Tributes are flooding in for former Victorian Labor senator John Button, who has died of cancer at the age of 74.

American classical pianist Martin Berkofsky has impressed music critics around the world with his firebrand virtuosity. But 25 years ago, he stopped playing for critics and began performing for charitable causes.

The wild black mane of hair Patti Smith's fans knew in the mid-1970s is streaked with gray now, but the free-spirited intensity that made her 1975 Horses album a groundbreaking work is still clearly evident in all she says, does, and sings.

Jody Williams' life as a globetrotting activist began in a small town in rural Vermont in 1950. "We had more cows than people and liked it that way! We [meaning] the whole state."

Benjamin Hooks was born in Memphis, Tennessee, on January 31st, 1925. Memphis, like most cities in the racially-segregated American South at the time, openly discriminated against African Americans in all areas of public life. Hooks'family exposed him early to what civil rights activists of his generation came to call the "Freedom Struggle."

Virtually everyone who joins a new group is sensitive to the fact that, as a newcomer, he or she must tread carefully for a while, keeping a low profile until becoming sufficiently integrated into the group.