Archive - April 2013

Broughton Cobern (Nepal 1973-75) is the author of the bestselling Everest: Mountain Without Mercy, a chronicle of the iconic first American expedition to Mount Everest in the spring of 1963. Now he has published to coincide with the climb’s 50th anniversary, The Vast Unknown America’s First Ascent of Everest. Crown Publishing will bring the book out on April 30, 2013, which means that it is already available on line or in book stores, if you can find one. This book and the climb are interesting in a number of ways. Some history that, of course, relates to the Peace Corps. One of the men on that famous climb was Willi Unsoeld who had just gone to work for the Peace Corps as the deputy director in Nepal. The director was the famous American climber Bob Bates, and Shriver in 1961 had asked Bates who he wanted as his deputy. Bates said Unsoeld. . . .

The April 29, 2013  issue of The New Yorker has a piece about Boston by George Packer (Togo 1982-83) in The Talk of the Town comment section. Packer writes about the city, its history, the Marathon, and the bombing.  He writes about how the spectators rushed to the scene, not away from it. “A man who had lost his own son in the Iraq War rushed a young man whose lower legs had been blown off to the tent, and so kept another father from losing his son.” He comments on the fact that Bostonians responded to the moment while our Senators in Washington, D.C. “cowered before the gun lobby and blocked passage of the most basic provisions–provisions supported by an overwhelming majority of the public–to diminish the gun violence to which more and more Americans, especially young men, are prone.” If you don’t get The New Yorker, my guess is . . .

História, História: Two years in the Cape Verde Islands By Eleanor Stanford (Cape Verde 1998-2000) CCLaP Hypermodern Editions March  2013 128 Pages http://www.cclapcenter.com/historia Reviewed by Marnie Mueller (Ecuador 1963-65) There are as many different Peace Corps memoirs as there are returned volunteers who choose to write them, each unique to the author and his or her experience, each generously sharing a hard won world view with the reader.  We all have our favorites, mine are Mike Tidwell’s The Ponds of Kalambayi, Geraldine Kennedy’s Harmattan, Kristin Holloway’s Monique and the Mango Rains, Peter Hessler’s River Town, and Moritz Thomsen’s masterwork, Living Poor.  These are the books I recommend to other writers, book groups, travelers, and friends who just want a good, original read.  I will now add Eleanor Stanford’s História, História to the list.  In fact, as I read her book for review, I found myself already telling anyone who would . . .

A Writer Writes THE PATH By Gigi Grover -York (India 1964-66) Despite the half century and the thousands of miles that separate my Oregon home from the Gundi ashram, I still retrace my way over the distant but familiar earthen path that led from the ashram to the train station at the village of Gundi, perched on the edge of the Kutch Desert in western India. That narrow raised track, no more than a meter wide and half a meter high, ran south from its tether at the broad wooden gate that breached the ashram’s thick whitewashed walls. I never thought much about who built the path.  It was a constant like the air and sky.  Surely someone maintained it but I never observed them.  It lay there when I came and had changed not at all upon my departure. The powder fine dust of the path had been deposited . . .

[This is the opening of the lead book review in the recent issue of the NYTIMES Sunday edition. The review was written by Rachel Shteir. It appeared last Sunday. Chicagoan, and RPCV novelist, Tony D’Souza (Ivory Coast 2000-02, Madagascar 2002-03), sent his reply to the editor of the Book Section. Read those paragraphs of the review and you’ll see why Tony send a Letter to the Editor. Check it out. The message is: don’t mess with a Chicago writer!] Published: April 21, 2013 RACHEL SHTEIR wrote: “Poor Chicago,” a friend of mine recently said. Given the number of urban apocalypses here, I couldn’t tell which problem she was referring to. Was it the Cubs never winning? The abominable weather? Meter parking costing more than anywhere else in America – up to $6.50 an hour – with the money flowing to a private company, thanks to the ex-mayor Richard M. Daley’s . . .

Thurston Clarke (Tunisia 1968) who served briefly as a PCV has a book coming in August 2013. It will be his 11th, and his third book on the Kennedy brothers. It is entitled: JFK’s Last Hundred Days: The Transformation of a Man and The Emergence of a Great President. In this book, Thurston weaves together Kennedy’s public and private lives, explains why the grief following his assassination has endured so long, and solves the most tantalizing Kennedy mystery of all–not who killed him but who Kennedy was when he was killed, and where he would have led us. Clarke picks up Kennedy’s last hundred days that began just after the death of two-day-old Patrick Kennedy. While Jackie was recuperating, the premature infant and his father were flown to Boston for Patrick’s treatment. Kennedy was holding his son’s hand when Patrick died on August 9, 1963. The loss of his son convinced . . .

Publisher’s Weekly in their March 18,2013, carried a starred review of The Price of Justice: A True Story of Greed and Corruption Leamer’s newest is the riveting and compulsively readable tale of the epic battle between Don Blankenship, the man who essentially ran the West Virginia coal industry through his company Massey Energy, and two seemingly ordinary attorneys: Bruce Stanley and David Fawcett.  The centerpiece of the story is a West Virginia mine owner whom Blankenship purposefully bankrupted and on whose behalf Stanley and Fawcett won(in 2002) a $50 million verdict that is still unpaid.  In hope of having the ruling overturned by the West Virginia Supreme Court, Blankenship sought to “buy” a seat on the court by contributing over $3 million to the successful campaign of a conservative judicial candidate.  However, the U.S. Supreme Court eventually found the Blankenship’s contributions were too much to allow the new West Virginia . . .

The Price of Justice: A True Story of Greed and Corruption Laurence Leamer (Nepal 1964–66) Times Books 412 Pages $30.00 (hardcover); $14.99 (Kindle) May 2013 Reviewed by Tony D’Souza (Ivory Coast 2000–02, Madagascar 2002–03) COAL HAS LONG BEEN A METAPHOR in our culture for the dark seed inside the greedy soul; the color of it, its hardness, all that compressed, combustible power. The pits where it’s dug are among our most basic conceptions of hell. “It’s dark as a dungeon,” Johnny Cash sings in his song of the same name, “damp as the dew/danger is double/pleasures are few/It’s dark as a dungeon way down in the mine.” Larry Leamer in his new book, The Price of Justice: A True Story of Greed and Corruption, discovers something even darker; the heart of a West Virginia coal executive whose lust for union busting, corporate expansion and profit leads to the deaths of . . .