Peter Hessler was a Peace Corps volunteer in Sichuan in 1996-1998 and his book chronicling his life there, River Town, is an excellent Peace Corps memoir. Even though I can’t think of a place more different from Macedonia, where I served, than China, he still has many of the same or similar experiences living in a …
Category Archives: international development
Italy and Refugees
As Italy struggles to accept massive flows of refugees from the Arab Spring, one hopes that the G7 country has learned something in last 20 years. As Berlusconi’s channel report that the refugees are complaining about the quality of food and as leghista Roberto Maroni makes doom-laden statements about a biblical exodus, I urge contemporary …
Song for the New Breed
Rory Stewart‘s The Places in Between, an account of his walk through Afghanistan in 2002, is every bit as good as critics say it is. (I can’t remember the last time when I read a book that proudly announced that it was a “New York Times Bestseller” on the cover, but publishing is a tough …