Author - John Coyne

This is Africa: Peace Corps Malawi and the Liberian Civil War by Eugene T. Caruso (Malawi 1990–92) CreateSpace $9.99 120 pages 2013   Reviewed by Jack Allison (Malawi 1966-69) Perhaps an ambitious title for such a short book which documents the author’s adventures as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Malawi which began in late 1990, then on to Liberia in early 1994 with the United Nations. Since I was posted as a PCV just seven miles north of Balaka (1967-68-69), I resonated with many of his experiences, including our both having suffered through two bouts of malaria. The first 102 pages of this 120 page book reveal Caruso’s reflections on Malawian culture, including his introduction to Chichewa, the national language; locally available foods, such as nsima, the national staple made from maize flour; his newly found joy of walking (“Malawi provided me with an appreciation of walking during the time . . .

Thai Comic Books Poems from my life in Thailand With the Peace Corps by Burgess Needle (Thailand 1967-69) Big Table Publishing, $14.00 60 pages 2013 Reviewed by Tony Zurlo(Nigeria 1964-66) In the Tucson Weekly, Author/Critic Jarret Keene wrote that in the poem “Who Collects the Eggs” Burgess Needle is exposing how the “teacher inevitably becomes a student, and how a child’s perspective is often more realistic and more enlightening than any so-called grown-up’s.” I concur absolutely; indeed, Needle’s collection Thai Comic Books is about this maturation, a process that perhaps most volunteers experience. An experience that seems to validate why the Peace Corps in the 1960s and still today is worthy of expansion  (Congress please take notice). Postcard photos of ducks in Boston intrigue his Thai school children. They ask who owns the ducks . He answers that nobody owns them: PUBLIC ducks. What does that MEAN? Why do children . . .

To order books whose titles are in blue from Amazon, click on the title or book cover — and Peace Corps Worldwide, an Amazon Associate, will receive a small remittance that will help support our annual writers’ awards. The Mountain School (Peace Corps memoir) by Greg Alder (Lesotho 2003–06) CreateSpace $13.00 (paperback), $5.00 (Kindle) 253 pages • Volunteers in the African Bush: Memoris From Sierra Leone Edited by David Read Barker (Sierra Leone 1965–67) Dog Year Publishing $15.00 (paperback); $3.99 (Kindle) 163 pages 2013 • Volunteers of America: The Journey of a Peace Corps Teacher by Dennis L. Carlson (Libya 1968–69) Sense Publishers $38.00 (paperback); $98.00 (hardcover) April 2012 • This is Africa: Peace Corps Malawi and the Liberian Civil War by Eugene T. Caruso (Malawi 1990–92) CreateSpace $9.99 120 pages 2013 • At Home in the World: Globalization and the Peace Corps in Nepal By Jim F. Fisher (Nepal . . .

Paul Theroux’s new book is a 2,500-mile foray into Africa’s heart (he’s been there before!) It is, says Theroux, his last trip on the continent. “Happy again, back in the kingdom of light,” writes Paul Theroux as he sets out on a new journey. Theroux first came to Africa when he was 22 and a PCV. We might say that the land has never left him. Now he returns, after fifty years on the road, to explore the little-traveled territory of western Africa and to take stock both of the place and of himself, as the book jacket tells us. The book jacket copy goes onto say: His odyssey takes him northward from Cape Town, through South Africa and Namibia, then on into Angola, wishing to head farther still until he reaches the end of the line. Journeying alone through the greenest continent, Theroux encounters a world increasingly removed from . . .

Broughton Cobern (Nepal 1973-75) is the author of the bestselling Everest: Mountain Without Mercy, a chronicle of the iconic first American expedition to Mount Everest in the spring of 1963. Now he has published to coincide with the climb’s 50th anniversary, The Vast Unknown America’s First Ascent of Everest. Crown Publishing will bring the book out on April 30, 2013, which means that it is already available on line or in book stores, if you can find one. This book and the climb are interesting in a number of ways. Some history that, of course, relates to the Peace Corps. One of the men on that famous climb was Willi Unsoeld who had just gone to work for the Peace Corps as the deputy director in Nepal. The director was the famous American climber Bob Bates, and Shriver in 1961 had asked Bates who he wanted as his deputy. Bates said Unsoeld. . . .

The April 29, 2013  issue of The New Yorker has a piece about Boston by George Packer (Togo 1982-83) in The Talk of the Town comment section. Packer writes about the city, its history, the Marathon, and the bombing.  He writes about how the spectators rushed to the scene, not away from it. “A man who had lost his own son in the Iraq War rushed a young man whose lower legs had been blown off to the tent, and so kept another father from losing his son.” He comments on the fact that Bostonians responded to the moment while our Senators in Washington, D.C. “cowered before the gun lobby and blocked passage of the most basic provisions–provisions supported by an overwhelming majority of the public–to diminish the gun violence to which more and more Americans, especially young men, are prone.” If you don’t get The New Yorker, my guess is . . .

História, História: Two years in the Cape Verde Islands By Eleanor Stanford (Cape Verde 1998-2000) CCLaP Hypermodern Editions March  2013 128 Pages http://www.cclapcenter.com/historia Reviewed by Marnie Mueller (Ecuador 1963-65) There are as many different Peace Corps memoirs as there are returned volunteers who choose to write them, each unique to the author and his or her experience, each generously sharing a hard won world view with the reader.  We all have our favorites, mine are Mike Tidwell’s The Ponds of Kalambayi, Geraldine Kennedy’s Harmattan, Kristin Holloway’s Monique and the Mango Rains, Peter Hessler’s River Town, and Moritz Thomsen’s masterwork, Living Poor.  These are the books I recommend to other writers, book groups, travelers, and friends who just want a good, original read.  I will now add Eleanor Stanford’s História, História to the list.  In fact, as I read her book for review, I found myself already telling anyone who would . . .