Dr. Wayne Williams, a Botanist and conservationist, travelled the world over a forty-year period, mostly in third world countries in Latin America, eastern Europe and central Asia, where he worked for sixteen years in international development. Dealing with the omnipresence of five bloody wars on numerous assignments as an environmental and agricultural scientist, this present volume 'Kissing the Hand of the Dead" creates an indefatigable confidence that solutions to war and violence are possible. The answer is within a massive appreciation and defense of Nature and those around us. This action lies within the paradigm to remember and honor our ancestors, learning from their historical experience. His descriptions of the joy, humor and pathos of cultural behavior are intriguing and mysterious, leading to a new means of ending war and finding new paths to peace and security.