Archive - June 11, 2019

      Conversations With US – Great Lakes States: Two Wheels, Fifty States, Hundreds of Voices – One America Chris Register (El Salvador 2001–03) Spoke & Word Books 280 pages $22.00 (flexibound) Reviewed by Sue Hoyt Aiken (Ethiopia 1962–64) • Conversations with US — Great Lakes States represents the first of a series of books on biking in every state by the author who had a concern about what he was reading and hearing . . .  ”that the United States was coming undone.” He decided to “wander” to find answers from “real America.”  Thus his first volume comes after his touring every state except Hawaii.  This bike ride in the Great Lakes States took place during the time frame from July to September 2015 and covered 1,916 miles! Although I am definitely not a biker I have been a long time hiker and wondered if I would have been brave . . .

     Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and The End of the American Century by George Packer (Togo 1982-83) Knopf Publisher 592 pages May 2019 $30.00 (Hardcover);  $20.49 (Paperback); $14.99(Kindle)  Review by Jeremiah Norris (Colombia 1963–65) • He had come a long way . . . and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him.” The Great Gatsby — F. Scott Fitzgerald                                                The Ego Has Landed  Introduction The author, George Packer, has a thoroughly beguiling style of writing in which the reader is being told a story rather than reading one, as with the opening line to Moby Dick: “Call me Ishmael;” Packer writes “you have heard that he is a monstrous . . .