November 22, 2015 – Peace Corps Worldwide

The Peace Corps and the Vietnam War, Part One

Nov 22 2015

Recently I have been reading two books that focus on volunteering in the time of the Vietnam War. The one that we are blogging about currently, Dr. Molly Geidel’s Peace Corps Fantasies: How Development Shaped the Global Sixties. The second is The Fortunate Few: IVA Volunteers From Asia to the Andes written by Thierry J. Sagnier. The IVS was founded in 1953 and played a key role in the establishment of the Peace Corps in 1961. Over 30 PCVs were IVsers after their service, another four became PCVs after IVS and some 17-18 were on the staff of the Peace Corps. Dr. Geidel spends a lot of time in her book detailing how PCVs spent time in the Peace Corps hiding from the draft, (remember now the good doctor has already said early PCVs in the ’60s were “ruggedly masculine figure” and now she is claiming we didn’t want to . . .

In Laurence Leamer’s (Nepal 1964-66) Library

Nov 22 2015

The New York Post, Sunday, November 22, 2015, has a one page book section and this week they featured Laurence Leamer (Nepal 1964-66). Here’s what writer Barbara Hoffman had to say about Larry… Antioch College was a liberal-arts college – liberal, period – when Laurence Leamer went there in 1960. John F. Kennedy was running for president, “but they didn’t think he was liberal enough,” Leamer says of his classmates. Leamer, however, supported JFK and wrangled a job in DC just in time to see the newly inaugurated president pass by on Pennsylvania Avenue. Decades later, after serving in the Peace Corps and writing for magazines, Leamer wrote three books on the Kennedys, including the bestselling The Kennedy Women. Now there’s Rose, his play about the Kennedy family matriarch. Starring Kathleen Chalfant, it’s playing at off-Broadway’s Clurman Theater through Dec. 13. . Here, 52 years after JFK’s death, are four . . .

Archive - November 22, 2015