Book Reviews

    The Peace Corps Experience: Challenge and Change, 1969-1976 By P. David Searles (Philippines Country Director 1971-74; Peace Corps Deputy Director 1974-76) The University Press of Kentucky March 1997 254 pages $21.96 (hard cover) Reviewed by David Elliott (Poland 1991-93; Staff-India 1966-68, Nigeria 1965-66, Sierra Leone 1964-65) • Was the Peace Corps on its deathbed in 1969? Did Director Joe Blatchford revive the patient with his “New Directions” medicine? In his preface, P. Searles is explicit as to his book’s “main message”: In late 1969, President Richard Nixon’s first Peace Corps director, Joseph H. Blatchford, announced a set of policies, which he labeled New Directions, that changed its [Peace Corps’] nature and ensured its survival…Without these changes its tenth anniversary (in 1971) would have been a wake mourning the death of the last of the Kennedy era. Peace Corps history buffs may find this book entertaining, even provocative. Searles was . . .

  Slacker’s Confession: Essays and Sketches By Lawrence F. Lihosit (Honduras 1975-77) CreateSpace 184 pages January 2018 $18.95 (paperback) Reviewed by Darcy Meijer (Gabon 1982-84) • Lawrence F. Lihosit’s latest book is a simple delight. His dozens of sketches make drawing look easy, and the essays are conversational and candid. His work and travels have taken him to Central and South America, and after eight years he carried home sketchbooks filled with 150 drawings and essays on art, travel, inspiration and technique. Slacker’s Confession is a tidy book in terms of scope and sequence: four parts, each with essay and sketches. Part I comprises Lihosit’s title essay and sketches from Uruguay, Argentina and Chile; part II his essay “Pen to Paper” and sketches from Bolivia, Peru and Ecuador; part III “Drawing Outdoors” and sketches from Panama, Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala; Part IV “Materials” and sketches from Caribbean and South . . .

  The Farm on the River of Emeralds by Moritz Thomsen (Ecuador 1965-67) Vintage Departuers 344 pages July 1989 $9.99 (paperback) Reviewed by Mark D. Walker (Guatemala 1971-73) • While perusing my favorite books above my desk today, I realized that I’d never reviewed a book of my favorite Returned Peace Corps Volunteer, Moritz Thomsen. He is best known for Living Poor, published in 1969, which is rated as one of the best Returned Peace Corps Volunteer memoirs of all time.  My personal favorite is The Farm on the River of Emeralds, the sequel, which tells a tale of endless reverses as a part owner of a farm on the northwestern coast of Ecuador—close to a hot, muggy, dirty, fishing village. The author struggles with his much younger, semi-literate black Ecuadorian partner, Ramon, and his wife Esther, battling nature, history and tradition in his efforts to develop a tropical farm in . . .

  Apostle: Travels Among the Tombs of the Twelve By Tom Bissell (Uzbekistan 1996) Vintage Paperback 517 pages February, 2017 $11.52 (paperback), $26.76 (hardback), $11.99 (Kindle) Reviewed by Denis Nolan (Ethiopia 1964-66) • When I first saw what this book was about, I became very interested. The front of the book says that is “Travels among the tombs of the Twelve”, and I thought I would learn a great deal about the legends and knowledge of where the apostles are buried. This is of interest to me, for I have been doing a fair amount of research into the early Christian religion and have found a number of discrepancies about what people in the gospels did after the death of Jesus and where they finished their lives . The book begins with a chapter on Judas Iscariot. At least that is what the title is. However, it is more about . . .

  Hot Milk on My Cornflakes: Peace Corps India-33 Remembers, A Collection of Vignette by Donald Clement (India 1966-68), editor;  and authors: Judy Barille (1966-69), Neal Barille (1966-69), Tom Carter (1965-67), Mike Thorburn (1966-68), Ken French(1966-68), Ruth Kister-Berry (1966-68), Tom McGarry (1966-68), Carol Reichert (1966-68), Katy Peek (1966-68) Createspace 173 pages September 2017 $4.95 (Kindle), $29.95 (paperback-color) Reviewed by Bob Arias (Colombia 1964-66) • DONALD CLEMENT AND THE TEN co-authors of Hot Milk On My Cornflakes, were members of India 33, from 1966-1968 during the biggest movement of Peace Corps Volunteers. Jack Hood Vaughn was the Peace Corps Director at that time.  In the book I like the memories of getting ready to report for Training before you leave home. Going to Philadelphia for staging where you meet your friends for life, and then leaving for Camp Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands where India 33 Trainees will spend three months. During 1966-1968, I was across the islands in Puerto Rico at Camp Radley as the Language . . .

  Writing Abroad: A Guide for Travelers By Peter Chilson (Niger (1985-87) & Joanne B. Mulcahy The University of Chicago Press 224 pages $22.50 (paperback), $67.50 (cloth), $13.50 (Kindle) Reviewed by David Arnold (Ethiopia 1964-66) • EDITING THE WORK of Returned Peace Corps Volunteers, I have learned that travel writing seems at first to be the easiest form of written narrative. That may be true if only you and your grandchildren are going to read it, but publishable travel writing is hard work. Most readers of a travel story in a magazine, a book or on a blog will not pay the fare and follow that writer’s taken path. They read the story so they won’t have to go, or they use the article to decide whether to go. Usually, they go somewhere else. In the end, the traveler’s tale must be satisfying as a passive reading experience. It takes . . .

  One of Us: Sex, Violence, Injustice.  Resilience, Love, Hope. by Sandi Giver (Uganda 2009–11) Peace Corps Writers June 2017 260 pages $14.95 (paperback) Reviewed by D.W. Jefferson (El Salvador 1974–76; Costa Rica 1976–77) •   SANDI GIVER WAS A Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV) in Uganda when she was raped by a member of the United States armed forces. This book is a memoir that started out as a written statement to the Naval Criminal Investigation Service (NCIS) about her rape. It took incredible courage for the author to tell her story, and she does so with a candor and attention to detail that is remarkable. In addition to the core story of the author’s rape and participation in two military trials, she includes information about her childhood, her work history prior to Peace Corps, being physically assaulted by her landlord in Uganda, and much more. It is a very far-reaching . . .

Meanderings: Inventions, Fripperies, Bits, & Bobs Gerald Karey (Turkey 1965-67) Small Batch Books 116 pages September 2017 $14.95 (paperback}   Reviewed by Will Siegel (Ethiopia  1962-64) • I’ve read that book titles should be ironic so as to provoke a sense of mystery, or perhaps just to turn the reader in the opposite direction of moral authority. Gerald Karey promotes the ironic in the first section of essays in his third volume, Meanderings. The subtitle seems to downplay expectations (Inventions, Fripperies, Bits, & Bobs), or call up the image of an English Squire. The irony here might be the author’s reluctance to take himself seriously, though he’s dedicated the volume to journalists killed in action, which portends a more serious look at the world. But remember we’re dealing here with irony. The first section “Sirens,” in fact, starts with a look back at the atomic bomb scare of many of our . . .

  Crescent Beach by David J. Mather (Chile 1968–70) Peace Corps Writers March 2016 426 pages $14.95 (paperback), $7.99 (Kindle)   Reviewed by D.W. Jefferson (El Salvador 1974–76; Costa Rica 1976-77)   • THIS WELL-WRITTEN NOVEL with a unique setting and very interesting, well developed characters who the author treats sympathetically. Author David Mather holds our interest by mixing background about Florida’s rural “Big Bend” region on the Gulf Coast and each character into the ongoing action of the story. It is a page-turner that is difficult to put down. The characters support each other and care for each other in heart-warming ways. By the end of the book, readers feel like they know these people and would be happy to have them for neighbors. The dialog is peppered with colorful, often humorous, local expressions. The author’s use of multiple narrators enhances the readers’ understanding of the different characters by allowing . . .

  The Devil’s Throat by Joseph Theroux (Samoa 1975-78) Kilauea Publications 190 pages September 2017 $8.99 Paperback  $3.99 Kindle Reviewed by Richard Wiley (Korea 1967-69) • Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve had the pleasure of reading Joseph Theroux’s The Devil’s Throat or Robert Louis Stevenson, Detective, a novel set in Hawaii in the late nineteenth century, starring, if you will, the great Scottish novelist himself, and narrated by his stepson Lloyd Osbourne. The conceit of the novel is that its author found a partially completed manuscript, written by the above named Osbourne, hidden in the false bottom of an antique chest he bought at auction “several years ago” in Hilo.  And maybe it’s true.  My abilities to detect artifacts from fact have waned over the years, so I can’t be sure.  But either way, it provides a great start to the mystery that the manuscript brings to light; namely that a locally . . .