New books by Peace Corps writers | November — December 2023

To purchase any of these books from Amazon.com — CLICK on the book cover, the bold book title, or the publishing format you would like — and Peace Corps Worldwide, an Amazon Associate, will receive a small remittance from your purchase that will help support the site and the annual Peace Corps Writers awards.

We include a brief description for each of the books listed here in hopes of encouraging readers  to order a book and/or  to VOLUNTEER TO REVIEW IT.

 See a book you’d like to review for Peace Corps Worldwide? Send a note to Marian at marian@haleybeil.com, and she will send you a free copy along with a few instructions.

P.S. In addition to the books listed below, I have on my shelf a number of other books whose authors would love for you to review. Go to Books Available for Review to see what is on that shelf.

Please, please join in our Third Goal effort and volunteer to review a book or books!!!

From a Peace Corps journal

Let Yourself Be Led: A Peace Corps Odyssey
Michael McQuestion (Philippine 1974-77)
Peace Corps Writers
316 pages
November, 2023
$15.95 (paperback)

Michael McQuestion is a returned Peace Corps volunteer who served in the Philippines from 1974-77. He earned a B.S. degree from the University of Notre Dame, an M.P.H. from Tulane School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, and a Ph.D in sociology from the University of Wisconsin/ Madison.

McQuestion helped launch Rotary’s PolioPlus Program for the Rotary Foundation. He taught at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and directed the Sustainable Immunization Financing Program at the Sabin Vaccine Institute. As a demographer he has studied mortality trends and determinants, health behaviors, and organizational change processes in developing countries. He currently works for the National Institutes of Health as a scientific review officer. McQuestion lives in Baltimore with his wife Liliana Manfredi.

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Memoir with portion as a Peace Corps Volunteer

Teacher Boy: A Memoir
Michael  Henrich (Vanuatu 1999-2001)
MBH Publishing,
November 2023
$9.99 (paperback), $2.99 (Kindle)

Teacher Boy was a substitute, private tutor, homebound teacher, middle and high school teacher, and behavior interventionist in his home town and halfway around the world, in the wealthiest and poorest parts of the globe. Teacher Boy is a personal and professional coming of age story. In peddling information to others he found universal truth in the students he treasured, and being their teacher finally allowed him to learn.

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Peace Corps memoir

If You Turn to Look Back: A Memoir and Meditation
by Tom Hazuka (Chile 1978-80)
Woodhall Press
388 pages
September 2023
$19.95 Paperback; $9.99 (Kindle)

If You Turn to Look Back combines memoir with political, social, and economic investigations of what it means to be an American and a citizen of the world. American influence is ubiquitous in South America, and If You Turn to Look Back explores these relationships in a personal context. For Tom Hazuka was once part of that influence, from 1978-1980 as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Chile, first in the capital of Santiago, then in the far northern city of Arica, near the Peruvian border.

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Travel

Escape to Alaska
by Steve Kaffen (Russia 1994-96)
December 2023
$0.00 (Kindle) Kindle Unlimited; $4.99 (Buy within 24 hours.

A land of superlatives: America’s largest state (by far) has the longest coastline, the tallest mountain, and the largest national park and national forest. Its thousands of glaciers include those in sprawling Glacier Bay, the enormous Hubbard Glacier, and majestic Mendenhall Glacier, an easy drive from the state’s low-key capital Juneau. Finally, Alaska is descriptive of a state of mind that embodies resourcefulness and self-reliance, confronting and surmounting challenges, an adventurous spirit, humility, and yes, solitude.

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Poetry

I Am a Fact Not a Fiction: Selected Poems
Edward  Mycue (Ghana 1961-63)
Wordrunner Press
58 pages
October 2023
$10.00 (paperback), $2.99 (Kindle)

Twenty-five poems in three sections:
I: War / Peace
II: Life / Time / Memory;
III: History

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The One-Way Ticket Plan: Find and Fund Your Purpose While Traveling the World
by Alexa West (Bulgaria)
New World Library
September 2023
328 pages
$9.99 (Kindle); $18.59 (Paperback)

This book has great Amazon reviews