Click on image to buy from Amazon.ComFew government programs enjoy the reputation of the Peace Corps, a political afterthought by President Kennedy that became one of the more enduring legacies of his administration. Succeeding administrations have had testy relations with the Peace Corps. Johnson railed against volunteers’ opposition to his invasion of the Dominican Republic, and Reagan tried to use the program to advance his agenda in Central America.
Since its 1961 inception, the Peace Corps has had to manage its mission to advance peace and provide development assistance, from teaching to building wells, against political onslaughts within the U.S. and host nations even as it managed its image as symbol of American idealism rather than tool of the CIA. Meisler, a deputy director during its early years, offers informed perspective from the turbulent years of the Vietnam War, when many volunteers were conflicted about their government, to the future direction of the Peace Corps. Drawing on his experience and interviews with former volunteers, he presents the fascinating characters, locales, and political background noise from a near-universally admired program’s 50-year history. –Vanessa Bush, Booklist
“The Peace Corps has always been poorly understood by Americans, and even its Volunteers rarely know much about the agency’s founding and development. When the World Calls is an instructive, thorough, and fascinating history.”—Peter Hessler, New Yorker staff writer, journalist, and author of River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze
“A thoughtful, balanced story of a program that captured the spirit of America. My Peace Corps service defined me and thousands of others who had the privilege of serving.”—Donna E. Shalala, president, University of Miami, and former secretary of Health and Human Services
“This is a wonderful portrait of the Peace Corps, its tangled history, its people, and its mission. It is a timely reminder of how it is possible to bring hope and change to the world. Stanley Meisler—a distinguished foreign correspondent—is just the man to tell this story.”—Paul Theroux
“Stanley Meisler delivers an enlightened and engaging narrative of President Kennedy’s ‘most enduring legacy’—the Peace Corps. With humor and a historian’s eye for telling detail, he carries us through this remarkable organization’s fifty years of history and leaves us convinced that 200,000 Volunteers really did make a difference in the world.”—David Lamb, long-time Los Angeles Times foreign correspondent and author of Vietnam Now: A Reporter Returns
“Stanley Meisler is a gifted writer—and one who knows the Peace Corps well, both from his work there in the early years and his decades as a foreign correspondent. This book is full of insights and great anecdotes. It is wonderful history, wonderfully told.”—James Mann, author-in-residence, Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, and author of Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush’s War Cabinet
The Washington Post Book World – February 20, 2011 (Excerpt)
In 2008 Christiane Amanpour illustrated America’s declining role in the world by telling a foreign policy conference, “There was a Peace Corps.” After the session a former volunteer named Jon Keeton angrily corrected CNN’s chief foreign correspondent: “There still is a Peace Corps.” As author Stanley Meisler recalls, “Amanpour blushed but pointed out that there must be something wrong if someone like herself did not realize the Peace Corps still existed.”
The Peace Corps is a forgotten player today, riding the far end of the government’s bench and seldom getting into a game. Some years ago a State Department document referred to it as the “Peach Corps” and no one caught the error. But the Corps still sent 7,671 volunteers abroad in 2009 (down from a peak of 15,556 in 1966). And these public-spirited people still improve lives around the world – one village, one school, one fish pond at a time. As Meisler, a former correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, puts it: “The Peace Corps has its share of failure. But the best Volunteers do accomplish a kind of magic. . . .” [Read the full article...]
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A Lady Jane Grey Novel by Peter Carroll
Queen Of Misfortune is the fictional story of Lady Jane Grey as told by her beloved tutor, John Aylmer. At the time of her execution a stranger is recorded to have assisted her when, blind folded, she lost her way upon the scaffold. Was it the same ‘stranger’ who was also recorded to have visited her when she was imprisoned in the Tower? Little is known of this unfortunate girl who was beheaded for treason in the 16th Century. She was only 16. She is omitted from the list of monarchs but was actually queen for nine days. Author Peter Carroll, in his novel, follows John Aylmer’s close relationship with Jane as her tutor and later, as she grows up, her lover. [More...]
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