Hilbert Reads Fall 2025: Home

Frustrated with an increasingly polarized social landscape, award-winning photographer John Noltner set out on a 40,000-mile road trip across the United States to rediscover the common humanity that connects us. He did so by asking people one simple question: "What does peace mean to you?" Through difficult conversations, gentle humor, and a keen eye for beauty, Noltner's Portraits of Peace captures a rich collage of who we are as a nation. Beautiful storytelling and captivating photography converge to offer a uniquely human and accessible examination of the social issues that most challenge us today, such as racial equality, immigration reform, LGBTQ+ rights, women's rights, freedom of religion, and tolerance. Through the real-world stories of ordinary citizens who choose, in the midst of difficult circumstances, to pursue healing, reconciliation, and community building, we discover a glimmer of hope that something better is possible. Portraits of Peaceoffers a promising road map to a peaceful future as a pluralistic society.

In the fall of 2020, award-winning photographer John Noltner and his wife Karen sold their Minnesota home and hit the road to live small, listen deeply and learn about who we are as a country. Over the next nine hundred days, they drove 93,000 miles across America and gathered hundreds of stories with one goal: in a divided world, to rediscover what connects us.

In a world that often asks us to consider the things that can separate us ... whether that is race, politics or ethnicity ... A Peace of My Mind explores the common humanity that unites us. "A Peace of My Mind" is a 120-page book that features the b&w portraits and personal stories of 55 individuals who answer the simple question, "What does peace mean to you?" Since 2009, Noltner has photographed and interviewed Holocaust survivors, refugees, political leaders, artists, homeless individuals, and others, asking them to reveal what peace means to them, how they work towards it in their lives and what obstacles they encounter along the way. The result is a stunning and heart-felt collection that acknowledges the challenges we face as a society, yet builds hope through the inspiring stories of people committed to peaceful tomorrows.