Archive - May 2014

Thanks to a ‘heads up’ from Murray Frank (CD Nigeria 1961-63  & HQ 1963-65) I read this morning the glowing Sunday New York Times review of Margery Michelmore Heffron’s (Nigeria 1961) book Louise Catherine: The Other Mrs. Adams published by Yale University Press. As the reviewer, Virginia DeJohn Anderson, noted, “Heffron, an independent scholar, succumbed to cancer before finishing a project that engaged her imagination for more than 30 years. Readers will nonetheless be grateful for this fascinating, if partial, portrait of an exceptional woman, and regret that its talented author fell silent too soon.” On December 15, 2011, on this site, I published a blog item using the title, “In Some Ways, She is the most famous RPCV of us all.” In it, I summed up Margery early Peace Corps career: As Michelmore, Margery went to Nigeria in 1961 with the first group of PCVs, in the first year of . . .

[As perhaps a companion piece to my blog item on the shift in America towards involvement in the world, I’d like to re-post a brilliant book review of Innocents Abroad: Teacheres in the American Century by David Espey (Morocco 1962-64) who teaches in the English Department at the University of Pennsylvania. Dave has also been a Fulbright Lecturer in Morocco, Turkey, and Japan. The book review was brought to my attention by an email I received from Dick Joyce (Philippines 1962-64) who commented on reading Zimmerman’s book, “I’m prompted to write because I finally got around to reading Innocents Abroad and I really enjoyed it. It is great to see how things one observed and sometimes participated in on a small scale were parts of larger historic trends. I’m pretty sure that I wouldn’t have known of the book if  you hadn’t recommended it on one of your websites several . . .