Author - John Coyne

Thanks for the ‘heads up’ from Deborah Harding (PC Staff, Virgin Islands, Cameron, Washington/HQ) Our Woman In Havana by Vicki Huddleston (Peru 1964-65) Harry N. Adams Publisher March 2018 304 pages $14.39 (Kindle); $26.76 (Hardcover)   Our Woman in Havana chronicles the past several decades of US-Cuba relations from the bird’s-eye view of State Department veteran and longtime Cuba hand Vicki Huddleston, our top diplomat in Havana under Presidents Clinton and George W. Bush. After the US embassy in Havana was closed in 1961, relations between the two countries broke off. A thaw came in 1977, with the opening of a de facto embassy in Havana, the US Interests Section, where Huddleston would later serve. In her compelling memoir of a diplomat at work, she tells gripping stories of face-to-face encounters with Fidel Castro and the initiatives she undertook, like the transistor radios she furnished to ordinary Cubans. With inside . . .

Meeting in Washington, D.C., Niger Prime Minister Ali Lamine Zeine informed Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell that all 1,000 U.S. special operations troops and other personnel must vacate the country. By Arthur I. Cyr of Carthage College   In the news — By ARTHUR I. CYR Syndicated Columnist  • • •  This is a major setback, during a time of general instability in that region. Last year, the leader of Gabon, Ali Bongo, was removed in a sudden military coup on Aug. 30. On July 26 of the government in Niger was overthrown. In August 2020, Mali experienced a military takeover. Coups have also taken place in recent years in Burkina Faso, Chad and Guinea. France is most tied to these nations culturally and economically, but the entire international community has stakes in this worrisome trend. Russia’s mercenary Wagner Group has been notably active in trying to establish lucrative contracts in . . .

  The Tales of Bismuth: Dispatches from Palestine, 1945-1948 By Jamie Kirkpatrick (Tunisia 1970-72) Independently Published March 2024 250 pages $4.99 (Kindle); $21.00 (Paperback); $33.98 (Hardcover) • • •  The Tales of Bismuth is the sequel to Jamie Kirkpatrick’s debut novel, This Salted Soil: The Battle for Tunisia, 1942-1943. In that novel, Kirkpatrick (Tunisia, 1970-72) introduced his readers to Declan Shaw, a young Irish journalist who is based in Tunisia and assigned to cover the Allied North African campaign against Nazi Germany. Upon completion of that journalistic assignment, Shaw goes to Palestine to cover events unfolding there. He arrives in the waning days of the British Mandate and begins to understand the complexities of of life in Palestine, the complexities of relations between Palestinians and Jews, as well as the complexities of the heart. Shaw strives to report on events as a neutral observer, an almost impossible perspective to maintain given the . . .

  The Swans at Tualoa by Julian Quarles (Peace Corps Caribbean trainer) Dorrance Publishing March 2024 540 pages $32.00 (Paperback); $34.44 (Hardback) • • •  And so he had come to the land Tualoa, its tapering mountains a brilliant green. Spoonbill and osprey, sandpiper, heron, the yellow-bellied sunbirds fringing the shore. What except this, this faraway land with the charm of a tale? They spent afternoons at Little Marquis away from the eyes of the elder Su’uni. The nectarine lands dropped into the sea, her blue-run chambers swollen with worm. A series of clouds bunched over the west. He may have remembered a scene from Simoon, the world immense with its moments of gladness. The purposes of heaven lay before them that day. It came on a wind, to the island places, Alisi, Croyenne and Île des pengouins . . . Recovered papers at an eastern university lead to a narrative spanning . . .