New books by Peace Corps writers | July through August, 2024

New books — 

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 maybe  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.

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

 

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Songs of Mali
by Ruth Gooley (Mali 1980-81)
Peace Corps Writers
May 2024
102 pages
$15.00 (paperback)

Songs of Mali is a poetic voyage into the heart of Mali and the people who live there, from the capital Bamako to Dilly, a small village on the edge of the Sahel.  

 

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Ganyesa: Stories from South African Peace Corps
John and Christine Campbell (South Africa 2007–09)
Book Baby
2017
128 pages
$16.00 (paperback)

The Campbells discovered that even with a smattering of the Setswana language, usually talking with people that had pretty good English language skills, they had very little understanding of people’s everyday goals and activities. People simply didn’t act in a way that they had  expected.

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The Big Red One To The B-29: Men and Women from the Fillmore Central School District, Allegany County, New York, in World War II: Pearl Harbor North America North Africa Pacific Islands Europe – Asia

by Robert N. Colombo (Colombia 1963-65)
Bowker Publisher
August 2024
462 pages
$25.00 (Hardback)

The author tells of Fillmore Centeral School Distrrict residents who participated in virtually every major invasion of World War II. They were with Big Red One (1st Infantry Division) in North Africa and Sicily. 

 

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From Mountains to Medicine: Scaling the Heights in Search of My Calling
Erica M. Elliott, M.D. (Ecuador 1974–76)
Lammastide Publishing
January 2024
383 pages
$19.95 (paperback), $16.99 (Kindle), 1 credit (audiobook– author narrator

From Mountains to Medicine is the story of Erica Elliott’s magical, mind-bending, and heart-opening journey of self-discovery in search of her life’s purpose.

 

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Other Rivers: A Chinese Education
By Peter Hessler (China 1996-98)
Penguin Books
July 2024
461 pages
$16.99 (Kindle); $19.69 (AudioBook); $25.94 (Hardback)

An intimate and revelatory account of two generations of students in China’s heartland, by an author who has observed the country’s tumultuous changes over the past quarter century

 

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The Benjamin Franklin Book of Quotes: A Collection of Speeches, Quotations, Essays and Advice from America’s Most Prolific Founding Father
Travis  Hellstrom (Mongolia 2008–2011)
Hatherleigh Press
July 2024
160 pages
$15.00 (paperback), $8.99 (Kindle)

The Benjamin Franklin Book of Quotes compiles his best quotes, speeches, and advice in one place and reaches out to an America, and a world, which need them more than ever.

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African Travels 1967-2010
John  McWilliam and Joanna McWilliam (Sierra Leone, 1967-69)
266 pages
August 2023
$23.95 (paperback)

 How two years in Sierra Leone set me and my wife, whom I met in Nigeria, on the road to living and working in Nigeria, Kenya and Tanzania as a life adventure. 

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The Emerging Cooperative Economy

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Classes of Travel: Things I Learned and Taught Along the Way
Edward Schack (Thailand 1978–80)
Book Baby
April 2024
733 pages
$28.22 (paperback), $2.99 (Kindle)

Classes of Travel: Things I learned and Taught Along the Way” includes a large section about my service as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Thailand from 1978 – 1980 as well as my work in 35 other countries for U.S. Customs and the U.S. Department of State.

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Recovery
by Vincent Spine (Peru 1966-69)
Independently Published
June 2024
141 pages

Unlike most poets, who can be either primarily narrativists or lyrical luminaries, Vincent Spina can be both and more. 

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Confessional Poems and Vignettes: Revisited
by Thomas Syre, Sr. (Ethiopia 1972-74)
Independently Published
94 pages
January 2024
$15.00 (Paperback)

The author writes about his time as a peacetime Marine overseas on Okinawa, and he also writes about his years in Ethiopia first with the Peace Corps as a young volunteer and then his productive retirement years as a university professor of public health. The collection speaks to his personal, familial, and professional, regrets, failures, brokenness, and successes in life.

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We Came, We Saw, We Changed:
Creating a Peace Corps Legacy in Tanzania 1964-1966
by PCV Members of Tanzania 5; Dennis Warner, Editor
Independently Published
June 2024
245 pages

This book provides a glimpse of some of the most memorable experiences in the lives of 74 Tanzania-5 Peace Corps Volunteers in the 1960s as they ventured into the little-known cultures of a country striving to enter the modern world. Told in their own words, this diversity of stories form a mosaic of life as they go about their work and play in towns, villages, and the bush.

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Falling Seven Times
by Mark G. Wentling (Honduras 1967-69), (Togo 1970-73)
Archway Publishing
318 pages
August 2024
$19.99 (paperback), $24.99 (hardback)

FALLING SEVEN TIMES is about a young Ethiopian woman, Alya, struggling to be a migrant worker to support her family.

 

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Jackleg Boys
by Mark G. Wentling (Honduras 1967-69), (Togo 1970-73)
Vanguard Press
506 pages
August 2024
$19.99 (Paperback)

Jackleg Boys unfolds with a gripping tale of survival, transformation, and the bonds forged in the crucible of adversity.

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Wolf Warrior Watch: Transforming the China Challenge
Allan “Alonzo” J. Wind (Ecuador 1980–82)
Enable & Ennoble
August 2024
$8.88 (Kindle)

This collection of musings is meant to examine flashpoints in a dispassionate, nonideological, and constructive manner and suggest steps that might offer greater success in overcoming, converting, and transforming the China challenge into a more helpful framework.

 

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The Life Of Lee Lye Hoe: An Unsung Woman Hero
Amazon Direct Publishing
by James A. Wolter (Malaysia 1962-66)
June 2024
353 pages
$16.79 (Paperback)

Lee Lye Hoe is a strong-willed resourceful woman who faces more trials and tribulations than anyone should face in a lifetime. Born in rural paternalistic China, abandoned by her father and then orphaned. Under threat of execution and penniless, she and two young charges must escape China. She finds her way to British Malaya where new challenges await her.

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