ABSTRACT
People fail to reach their potential for many reasons. In this book, all participants—editors and authors—want to make it possible for people to exceed even their most optimistic expectations for themselves. Some of the barriers to fulfillment arise from unforgiveness. We provide brief histories of the field of forgiveness studies and of the Handbook. Then we point the reader to the contents of this volume. In the final section we urge readers to enter their study of this Handbook with open eyes, seeking answers to possible questions that we pose throughout this orienting chapter. But, more than that, also going beyond what we alert readers to and what the chapter authors see as the implications of their own chapters to find exciting, unanticipated ways to use the material.
