INSIDE USAID: AN ODYSSEY OF FOREIGN ASSISTANCE

A veteran of the organization recounts life at USAID and in American international development more broadly.

Drawing on nearly three decades of service, Brown paints a colorful portrait of the United States Agency for International Development from an insider’s privileged perspective. After an 11-year stint practicing commercial law, the author joined the Agency in 1987 and served in various capacities through 2009—a momentous span of history that included revolutions in the Middle East, coups in Central America and Africa, and the fall of the Soviet Union. Brown begins with a few critical pages explaining the structure and impact of USAID, noting its longevity, size, and scope. The lists of specific programs and their impacts are particularly revealing in their breadth, depth, and occasionally, surprise; numerous agricultural products from across the Americas, for instance, are available in United States grocery stores not because of vague market forces or savvy businesspeople but because USAID invested in agriculture and trade guided by specific objectives and strategies. The bulk of the text is an account of Brown’s career as he moved from country to country, including Haiti and the Dominican Republic (and places farther afield like Kenya, Madagascar, and Kyrgyzstan as a Foreign Service professional). The author provides detailed descriptions of each location’s layout, climate, culture, and, often, the colonial heritage from which each nation is struggling to emerge (“The memory of genocide remains relevant to ethnic identity in independent Namibia”). The text is varied and informative; Brown clearly explains what USAID does and why. However, he runs into some problems common to memoirs, struggling to tell a story with a large chronological span and to convey bigger ideas through human-sized moments. Often, significant events (a coup required diplomatic staff to hunker in place for a week eating nothing but rice and cabbage) are afforded as much space on the page as insignificant ones (getting stuck in an airport waiting area for six hours). The result is more a quirky travel memoir than a sustained look at USAID and the international development space.

An informative and engaging but ultimately unsatisfying look at a bygone era of American soft power abroad.