Book Reviews

  Quick & Quotable: Columns from Washington, 1985–1997 (Bliss Institute series) William L. Hershey (Ethiopia 1968–70) The University Of Akron Press March, 2020 246 pages $24.74 (paperback) Reviewed by Kathleen Johnson Coskran (Ethiopia 1965-67) • Quick and Quotable is just that, and I would add amusing, insightful, and always interesting even if the main “characters” are new to the reader. The temptation for the reviewer is to simply quote Hershey’s best quotable lines, but then the review would  be almost as long as the book. The columns are from Hershey’s 13 years (1987—1997) as the Akron Beacon Journal’s Washington correspondent. He was charged to report news pertinent to Akron readers and wrote weekly columns “to take a look behind the headlines,” to engage and inform as well as entertain, and he thought of them “as sending letters back home from a foreign country.” For the reader in 2020, at least a . . .

  We Are Akan: Our People and Our Kingdom in the Rainforest — Ghana, 1807 by Dorothy Brown Soper (Ghana 1962–65), author; and  James Cloutier (Kenya 1962–66), illustrator Luminare Press October 2020 358 pages Reading level : 9 – 12 years October 2020 $8.99 (Kindle); $19.99 (Paperback) Reviewed by Sue Hoyt Aiken (Ethiopia 1962–64) • Imagine this reader’s surprise to see the date of 1807 implying this was a historical story, in Africa!  Lucky would be the kids in school today who get to read about a powerful, intelligent, community-minded kingdom located in Ghana in West Africa, in 1807! The story follows young people going about their daily lives doing work for and about the community.  Their “educations” are mapped out and led by elders or older relatives. Women do honorable work and most important of all, each child’s experiences and attempts to accomplish tasks are rewarded with warm words of . . .

  Michael Gold: The People’s Writer by Patrick Chura( Lithuania 1992-94) 354 pages SUNY Press December 2020 $33.95 (Kindle); $95.00 (Hardback) Reviewed by Marnie Mueller (Ecuador 1963-65) • Counterintuitively, the hardest to write book reviews are for ones you most admire.  And Patrick Chura’s biography, Michael Gold: The People’s Writer is one such book. Reading Chura’s text has been an intimate labor of love for me. In the very last pages of his story of the life of Michael Gold a sentence stood out to describe my deep attachment.  “. . . (Michael) Gold managed the challenge of proving the existence of another America, and how difficult it made his life.” In writing of Michael Gold, an avowed and uncompromising Marxist, a man who has fallen out of the literary canon, out of the political history of America, despite his major contributions and successes, Chura has told the story of . . .

  Creative Types and Other Stories By Tom Bissell (Uzbekistan 1996) Pantheon 225 pages March 2021 $12.99 (Kindle); $25.95 (hardback), $14.70 (Audible) Reviewed by Tony D’Souza (Ivory Coast 2000-02, Madagascar 2002-03) • TOM BISSELL’S LATEST SHORT STORY COLLECTION, Creative Types and Other Stories is an absolute pleasure to read if you are a Tom Bissell fan. First time readers of Bissell, however, will be lost in a nerdy, introverted world where conflicted couples make self-flagellating and embarrassing attempts at sex, where all sex is generally intellectually over-analyzed and very, very bad, and the reader begins to wonder just a few stories in whether Bissell’s own sex life — he has tellingly and unnecessarily noted that ‘This is, emphatically, a work of fiction’ — is as horrible as all the pages of this book seem to suggest. That Bissell has profound and embarrassing issues with sex is no secret to anyone . . .

  Africa Memoir by Mark G. Wentling (Togo 1970-73) Open Books Publisher 255 pages August 2020 $9.99 (Kindle); $21.95 (Paperback Reviewed by Robert E. Hamilton (Ethiopia; 1965-67) • To review fairly this first volume of three in the Africa Memoir trilogy, it will be generally useful to remember what it is, as a book and concept, rather than what it is not. It is not, for example, a history of the 54 countries in Africa, all of which Mark Wentling has visited (some only briefly). Neither is it a guide book which you would expect, like Lonely Planet or a Rick Steves publication, to be updated annually or regularly. Wentling says in his Foreword: The central purpose of this book is to share my lifetime of firsthand experiences in Africa. I also attempt to communicate my views about the many facets of the challenges faced by each of Africa’s countries. . . .

  America’s Buried History: Landmines in the Civil War by Kenneth R. Rutherford (Mauritania 1987-89) Savas Beatie Publisher 216 pages April 2020 $17.95 (Kindle) $29.95 (Hardback) Reviewed by Paul Aertker (Mauritania 19988-89) • With exciting prose and perfectly chosen Civil War quotes, America’s Buried History weaves a little-known thread through a well-known story. This history of landmines is the first Civil War book I’ve read in a long time, and the first on the subject that I’ve ever read. For a non-fiction book, I was surprised by the thrilling pace, and at times the narrative felt like it was in the hands of great non-fiction masters like Sebastian Junger and Jon Krakauer. While it’s easy to see this book on a college Civil War syllabus, its educative value is matched equally by its readability. What’s more, the author’s use of war vocabulary — “abatis,” “fraise,” “glacis” — is “lagniappe”* to an . . .

  My Sister, A Journey to Myself by Peter Breyer (India 1965-67) Miah Books 263 pages 2010 $11.50 (paperback) Reviewed by Stephen Foehr (Ethiopia 1965-67) • Peter Breyer wrote this family memoir when he was a fifty-nine-year-old American white male with a professional career, former Peace Corps volunteer in India, a family man, a Christian who attended Bible study classes at his wife’s Black church. The story recounts his search for a German half-sister he never knew he had, and how the journey brought him face-to-face with the conundrum — how can we do this to each other? Breyer’s parents were German. His mother was well educated from an upper-middle-class Jewish family. His father came from the working class and was a vocal anti-Hitler critic, which brought him to the attention of Nazi authorities. His parents, Max and Marcelle, fled Germany in 1936, when the crackdown on Jews and dissidents . . .

  Fever! and other stories from The Land of Mobutu Peter Loan (Staff— CD Zaire 1976–79; Washington) Peace Corps Writers August 2020 100 pages $9.99 (paperback), $5.99 (Kindle) Reviewed by Larry Trouba (Togo 1988–90; staff/APCD Benin 1997–2000) • Ebola, insanity and physical insecurity are just a few of the themes that Peter Loan explores in Fever! and Other Stories from the Land of Mobutu. In his debut short story collection, Loan gives the reader a glimpse of life in 1970s Zaire for Peace Corps Volunteers and staff living in a county which perhaps more than any other typified the kleptocracy that was omnipresent in sub-Saharan Africa, but also a land that nevertheless engendered a fond affection for those dedicated enough to face the challenge. This collection illustrates some of the issues faced by Peace Corps administrators in overseeing a large program in a vast African country, third the size of the . . .

  Me Ramblins ‘Cross the Wide Missouri: The Adventures of a Wayfarin Man in the Ol’ West by David S. Smits (Guatemala 1963–65) Peace Corps Writers 2017 500 pages   Reviewed by D.W. Jefferson (El Salvador 1974-76; Costa Rica 1976-77) • If most of what you believe you know about American frontier life in the pre-Civil War years is from movies and TV shows, you should definitely read this book. Author David Smitts was a professor of American history, specializing in U.S. westward expansion and the evolving frontier region for 38 years before retiring. He had often assigned his students to create a fictitious character and insert him or her into authentic events in history based on what primary sources they could find. The character, acting as chronicler, would interact with actual individuals of the time period who should behave in accordance with the historical record. The completed project would take . . .

  LIVING POOR and THE SADDEST PLEASURE: Two by Moritz Thomsen Reviewed for BookMarks/SIETAR  by Craig Storti (Morocco 1970-72) • There’s a movement afoot (led in part by Mark Walker (Guatemala 1971-73), see the interview below) to elevate Moritz Thomsen (Ecuador 1965-67) to the status of a Very Important Writer, someone whose books stay in print for generations and get assigned in college literature classes, someone whose name every well-read person should know. And we here at BookMarks SIETER [Society of Intercultural Education, Training and Research USA] are happy to do our part. We briefly mentioned Thomsen in one of our previous columns (where we reviewed two Peace Corps memoirs), and now the time has come to bring him front and center. Living Poor: An American’s Encounter with Ecuador (image is the cover second edition) is widely considered the quintessential Peace Corps memoir. With deepest apologies to all my Peace Corps . . .

  Learning Peace: Stories from My Time in Peace Corps Ethiopia Krista  Jolivette (Ethiopia 2018-2020) Independently published August 2020 298 pages $9.99 (Facebook), $4.99 (Kindle) Reviewed by James W. Skelton, Jr (Ethiopia 1970-72) • Krista Jolivette has penned an unusual book about her 21 months of Peace Corps service as a teacher in Ethiopia from 2018 to 2020.  I expected it to be a memoir, but the Preface reveals something different altogether. There, Krista writes about unpacking her things when she got home (in March 2020, she was evacuated from Peace Corps Ethiopia due to the coronavirus pandemic), and shares her vision for the book as follows: “And that is what I’ve done here in this book — gradually unpacked my Peace Corps experience for you . . . in a way that is both honest and vulnerable . . ..”  Then she discloses that she tried to write one . . .

  Africa Memoir by Mark G. Wentling (Togo 1970-73) Open Books Publisher 255 pages August 2020 $9.99 (Kindle); $21.95 (Paperback) Reviewed by Mark D. Walker (Guatemala 1971-73) • I’ve read and reviewed several of the author’s books over the years. We were both Peace Corps Volunteers in Central America and worked in West Africa, although Wentling went on to work and travel in 54 African countries over the years. My favorite book from his African Trilogy is Africa’s Embrace, which is fiction but reflects his experience working as a Peace Corps Volunteer in West Africa in the 1970s. The well-developed characters force the reader deep into the heart of Africa. Wentling worked with USAID and the State Department, so his book, Dead Cow Road, is an authentic and compelling work of historical fiction that focuses on the U.S. response to Somalia’s 1992 famine. Somalia is one of the most challenging, . . .

  Juror Number 2: The Story of a Murder, the Agony of a Neighborhood Efrem  Sigel (Ivory Coast 1965-67) Writers Press Publisher 146 pages November 2020 $19.00 (Hardcover), $15.95 (paperback), $9.99 (Kindle) Reviewed by Dick Lipez (Ethiopia 1962-64) • This valuable short book about the author’s experience with the New York City criminal justice system is more like a long New Yorker article than a book.  But that’s fine  — it’s the kind of well-thought-out and well-written reporting you get drawn into and read all the way through and know afterwards that you’ve learned something. Picked as a juror in a trial involving a Bloods vs. Cripps double homicide outside an East Harlem public housing project, Sigel becomes puzzled over why Abraham Cucuta has gunned down two other young men during a supposed gang truce in what starts out as a friendly dice game. It becomes clear during the three-week trial . . .