Author - Marian Haley Beil

The Huffington Post reports: More than a decade after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, veteran journalists Peter Eisner and Knut Royce are releasing a new [Kindle] edition of their groundbreaking book, The Italian Letter [first published in 2007]. More relevant than ever, The Italian Letter provides explosive, historic insights for a greater understanding of the Iraq War and how the United States got there. Here is a report by Royce on the hoax that helped launch the U.S. invasion and led to today’s disintegration of the country. Read Knut’s report at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/knut-royce/italian-letter-iraq-invasion_b_5574204.html The Italian Letter by Peter Eisner and Knut Royce Amazon Digital 288 print pages $5.95 (Kindle)

Posted in Paraguay is not the usual Peace Corps book — a first time voyage of discovery — because Eloise and Chuck Hanner had done it all before — twenty-five years before. That was back in 1971 when they left, newly married and newly graduated, for a Peace Corps assignment in Afghanistan. It had been a terrific experience and they swore at the time they would do it again — maybe when they were old and retired. But when they turned fifty (not old or retired) they found themselves bored with their stock-brokerage careers and in need of a new direction. Despite admonitions from Thomas Wolfe, who warned “you can’t go home again,” they decided to join the Peace Corps once more. Although this time they wanted to serve in a Spanish speaking country, and a way to use their business background. The Peace Corps recruiter had just the ticket: . . .

Marty writes: Cannons for the Cause is a novel about the early days of the American Revolution. It is a gripping story of friendships formed, families divided, first loves, and of loyalty, courage and patriotism. In the brutal winter of 1775-1776, sixteen year old Will Stoner is one of many teamsters hauling heavy cannons more than 300 miles from Ft. Ticonderoga in upstate New York to Cambridge, Massachusetts. The train of wagons and sleds struggles across the partially frozen Hudson River and through a blizzard in the steep Berkshire mountains, to bring the desperately needed artillery to General Washington, preparing to attack the British in Boston. Cannons for the Cause places Will in the midst of actual, but little known,  historical events — a race riot in Cambridge between the Marblehead Mariners, the first integrated unit of the Continental Army, and a militia of backwoods riflemen; and the stealthy night . . .

Wanderlust Satisfied is the story of Kay Gillies Dixon (Colombia 1962–64), one of the first Peace Corps Volunteers, and her  personal search through her two years of service, and how that experience changed everything about the rest of her life. Like so many Volunteers, she determined to follow her own ideals and dreams and unlearn the “Shoulds” and “Have-tos” she had been assigned by society. Kay was reared in a small town in western Pennsylvania, in the 1950s, during simpler times when a long distance telephone call was a big deal, and television sets displayed only three channels — all of them featuring stories about the Cold War, Nikita Khrushchev, and the Berlin Wall on the evening news. At the same time our country was caught in the struggle for basic civil rights for all peoples as Martin Luther King and his Southern Christian Leadership Conference worked to register voters . . .

Several years back, author/editor Jon Thiem mentioned to a young woman (with a Ph.D.) that in the late 1960s he had served in the Peace Corps in Ghana, West Africa. She thought he was talking about a United Nations Peace Keeping operation! Taken by surprise, he laughed and thanked her for the alternative biography she had bestowed on him. Then he told her about Peace Corps. The incident was what initially inspired him to compile this collection Letters from Ghana 1968-1970: A Peace Corps Chronicle A combination of historical forces in the 1960s induced tens of thousands of (mainly) young U.S. volunteers to live in countries other than their own and engage in humanitarian activities. The body of letters that resulted from this great Peace Corps diaspora is a rich yet neglected legacy. From August 1968 to June 1970, Thiem was a Peace Corps Volunteer in a village in the . . .