THE MAGSAYSAY STORY

As an exuberant biography of an appealing figure, a man who had to struggle against an unprivileged background and who did it successfully while still young, this should have its young adult audience. For Ramon Magsaysay was a village boy whose parents could offer him only the barest opprotunities for education, yet his enthusiasm for work and for people was marked from boyhood on. He did manage to go to the university in Manila, to become a mechanic and a successful one. He was happily married, free of debt and hopeful of his future as branch manager of a motor concern, when circumstances opened another road of life. He became a guerrilla leader during the war with Japan and emerged a member of Congress from his own hometown district after the war. His rise thereafter was quick, but that of a good man who knew he had a job to do; and his path to the presidency contains something skin to the magic of knight-errantry- and a very real picture of what Asia means for us today.