April 13, 2009 – Peace Corps Worldwide

Living Off Advances

Apr 13 2009

“Why is it,” Michael Meyer (China 1995-97) asks, “that writers who can’t recall their Social Security numbers can recite a rival’s advance to the penny?” Meyer answers that question (and a lot more!) in an entertaining and informative essay on the back page of the Book Section of the April 12, 2009, issue of The New York Times. In his piece, Meyer goes into “blockbuster advances” that came about in the early 1970s. He tells how Viking sold the paperback rights to The Day of the Jackal to Bantam for 36 times the $10,000 hardcover advance it had paid the author. If you are interested in what your next advance might be, take a look at Micheal’s piece in the Times.

Establishing The Peace Corps:Women at HQ, Post 24

Apr 13 2009

Arriving for work on or before March 1, 1961, the day President Kennedy signed the executive order establishing the Peace Corps, were a number of women who would become famous during these early years at the agency. The majority of these women were well connected by family and friends to Shriver and the new administration and eagerly went to work at the Peace Corps. The Peace Corps was the ‘hot’ agency and everyone wanted to be connected to Kennedy–if they couldn’t be in the White House–they wanted to be with Shriver at the Peace Corps. Some of these noted women were: Maryann Orlando, Sally Bowles, Nancy Gore, Nan McEvoy, Diana MacArthur, Patricia Sullivan, Alice Gilbert, Betty Harris, Ruth Olson, Dorothy Mead Jacobsen. It is a long list, but nevertheless the agency was dominated by men. Looking at old black-and-white photos one is struck by two things: 1) the women are sitting behind the men . . .

Archive - April 13, 2009