One RPCV View — Elizabeth Kallman’s THE DEATH OF IDEALISM
The Death of Idealism: Development and Anti-Politics in the Peace Corps by Meghan Elizabeth Kallman (NPCV) Columbia University Press 293 pages April 2020 $28.00 (paperback); $15.39 (kindle); $110.00 (hardback) • ONE RPCVs VIEW Marnie Mueller (Ecuador 1963-65) As I read Meghan Elizabeth Kallman’s book, THE DEATH OF IDEALISM: Development and Anti-Politics in the Peace Corps, all I could think was, of course, idealism was challenged by the experience of being in the Peace Corps. It should have been, if you accept the definition of Idealism as: the practice of forming or pursuing an ideal unrealistically, as in the idealism of youth. Kallman’s book is an erudite, complex treatise on the many ways that idealism was “killed” in Peace Corps Volunteers over the organization’s six-decade history. I’m afraid I can only speak for myself and a few others of my early 1960s cohort in this review, a microcosm in relation to . . .
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Here's what I would say as an RPCV (late 1990s) to Dr Kallman: In terms of your overall argument, I…