Archive - 2013

What: RPCV Writers and Filmmakers Panel Where: NPCA Conference When: Saturday, June 29, –1:30 to 2:30 Who Is On The Panel? Allen Mondell (Sierra Leone 1963–65) has worked in films and television as a writer, producer and director for 40 years. He recently completed Waging Peace: The Peace Corps Experience, a documentary that weaves the letters, journals, emails and blogs written by Volunteers with the profiles of four former Volunteers who, in their work today, are still making a difference. • Will Siegel (Ethiopia 1962–64) taught secondary school in Addis Ababa and at the Haile Selassie I School for the Blind; he was also part of a team that authored original text books. Following his return to the US, Will attended graduate school at San Francisco State University and wrote TV scripts for an early Showtime series as well as training videos for large corporations. • Rajeev Goyal (Nepal 2001–03) new book, . . .

The Vast Unknown: America’s First Ascent of Everest by Broughton Coburn (Nepal 1973-75) Crown Publishers (a division of Random House). $26.00 300 pages 2013 Reviewed by Don Messerschmidt (Nepal 1963-65) This is a book of true high adventure. Good reading for those of us who like outdoor adventures and severe challenges. This book is full of them, start to finish. Just a little past half way along, the story of the 1963 American Mount Everest Expedition reaches a dramatic climax, of sorts. On May 22, 1963, standing ready to challenge the peak from a point high on the ridge, the two American climbers, Hornbein and Unsoeld, faced a strategic decision. “Favorable luck, strange omens, obstacles, and argument be damned,” they thought. “The dazzling, vast unknown¾a key threshold to the uncertainty… was beckoning them forward and upward.” This “was no longer an academic exercise,” writes Brot Coburn, this was a decision . . .

[RPCV Writers, Editors and Film makers will hold a session at the NPCA Conference in Boston this month, June 28-29. For more information, call 202.293.7728 x 13. Check out: www.peacecorpsconnect.org/annual-gathering/ If you are going to the conference, check out the Writers’ Panel. Here are the details: Panel: Telling Your Peace Corps Story – RPCV Writers and Filmmakers. Moderator: Allen Mondell. Panelists: Will Siegel, Rajeev Goyal, and Cynthia Phoel. RPCVs will receive practical insight on creative ways for writing and producing films about their Peace Corps experience.] Allen Mondell (Sierra Leone 1963-65) has worked in films and television as a writer, producer and director for 40 years.  He began his career as a newspaper reporter in Baltimore and then went to work for Westinghouse Broadcasting in Baltimore (WJZ-TV) as a writer/director of documentary films. Allen spent five years at public television station KERA-TV in Dallas as a writer, producer and director of . . .

[It is time to nominate your favorite Peace Corps book published in 2012. Make your nomination(s) in the comment section following this announcement so people can see what books have been recognized. You may nominate your own book; books written by friends; books written by total strangers. The books can be about the Peace Corps or on any topic. The books must have been published in 2012. The awards will be announced in August. Thank you for nominating your favorite book written by a PCV, RPCV or Peace Corps Staff. A framed certificate and money are given to the winners.] Paul Cowan Non-Fiction Award First given in 1990, the Paul Cowan Non-Fiction Award was named to honor Paul Cowan, a Peace Corps Volunteer who served in Ecuador. Cowan wrote The Making of An Un-American about his experiences as a Volunteer in Latin America in the sixties. A longtime activist and . . .

The Unwinding by George Packer (Togo 1982-83) Farrar, Straus and Giroux $27.00 432 pages 2013 Reviewed by Mark Brazaitis (Guatemala 1991-93) It seems unfair to criticize something for not being what it never intended to be. Imagine Hemingway being criticized for not including an analysis of 1940s fishing yields in the Caribbean in The Old Man and the Sea. Or the Rolling Stones being rebuked for not slipping a violin concerto into Exile on Main Street. Or Georgia O’Keefe being taken to task for not depicting an occasional tractor or bulldozer or tomato soup can in her orchid series. In his June 9 review of George Packer’s The Unwinding, David Brooks, in the New York Times Book Review, faults the author for failing to provide a “theoretical framework and worldview” that would explain the lives and situations Packer examines. Brooks, a Times op-ed columnist, compares The Unwinding to John Dos . . .

Discovering the New America: Where Local Communities Are Solving National Problems by Francis P. Koster (Sierra Leone 1964-66) The Optimistic Futurist, $25.25. 264 pages 2013 Reviewed by Matt Losak (Lesotho 1985-88) In Francis Koster’s Discovering the New America (The Optimistic Futurist, 2013), the author offers a volume chockablock with proven,  innovative ideas for solving common community problems like conserving water and homelessness and nationwide scourges such as obesity and criminal recidivism. Koster, an “optimistic futurist” by trade and thinking, is selling his badly needed brand of the Peace Corps can-do tonic for anyone who might slow their gate in front of his friendly wagon. Sadly, though, in today’s climate, where truth and reason are too often being burned at the stake, this catalogue of optimism might seem a little out of touch for the increasingly embittered and paranoid American audience. I mean, I actually have relatives who still believe our . . .

Strange Stones—Dispatches from East and West By Peter Hessler (China 1996-98) Harper Perennial trade paperback; $14.99 354 pages May 2013 Reviewed by Richard Lipez (Ethiopia 1962-64) Strange Stones is Peter Hessler’s fourth book that’s all or mostly about China, and it’s as fresh, meaty, and irresistible as the acclaimed three others, Country Driving, Oracle Bones , and his exemplary Peace Corps memoir, River Town .   The new book is a collection of eighteen pieces, most of which first appeared in The New Yorker, where Hessler is a staff writer now reporting from Cairo . Having picked up some anti-Chinese sentiment in Thailand and Burma , I’ve never been all that eager to set foot in the Peoples Republic .   Their neighbors to the south tend to regard the Chinese as aggressive, exploitive and rude, and I’ve witnessed a good deal of this behavior.   I have more favorable second thoughts about . . .

New York Times columnist David Brooks in the Sunday (6/9) Book Review gives a long and largely positive review of George Packer’s (Togo 1982–83) new book The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America recently published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Brooks compares Parker’s book to the novels of John Dos Passos U.S.A. trilogy (1930–1936) that came out during the Great Depression. The difference being that Packer’s characters are real, and Packer is not writing fiction. Brooks writes that The Unwinding is “a gripping narrative of contemporary America” and goes onto say in his long, long review, that “the stories that do fill its pages are beautifully reported.” Brooks major complaint is this: “Packer does an outstanding job with these stories, The Unwinding offers vivid snapshots of people who have experienced a loss of faith. As a way of understanding contemporary America, these examples are tantalizing. But they are . . .