Archive - May 14, 2013

The second of our two Peace Corps Writers at The New Yorker, George Packer (Togo 1982-83), has a book coming out at the end of May. Packer’s book is a massive study of some 432 pages that goes on sale for $27.00 on May 21, 2013. Farrar, Straus and Giroux is publishing the book that, as they write, is: “A riveting examination of a nation in crisis.” The Unwinding: An inner History of the New America journeys through the lives of several Americans, including Dean Price, the son of tobacco farmers, and an evangelist for new economy in the rural South. The narrative combines these intimate stories with biographical sketches of such figures as Newt Gingrich to Jay-Z. The book, according to FSG ” portrays a superpower in danger of coming apart at the seams, its elites no longer elite, its institutions no longer relevant, its ordinary people left to improvise their own schemes for . . .

Recollections of our Peace Corps Service 1963-65: Kick-Off, Life in Guatemala, and Afterwards Compiled by Ramona Whaley, edited by Dave Smits Peace Corps Writers, $13.75 288 pages 2012 Reviewed by Leita Kaldi Davis (Senegal 1993-96) Recollections of Our Peace Corps Service 1963-65 is a unique compilation of stories and essays written by an entire group of Returned Peace Corps Volunteers, “Guatemala III,” a “mixed bag” that included an African American, Japanese Chomorro, Jews, and Hispanic Americans.  The book is divided into three sections: (1) Roads to the Peace Corps and the Training Experience; (2) Service in Guatemala; (3) Thereafter.  Each writer recalls being inspired by JFK’s unforgettable “ask not” speech, and they all share the “black anguish” of his assassination.  Several participated in the March on Washington in 1963 and heard Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s famous “mountaintop speech” that filled them with an idealistic, determination to promote justice, equality . . .