A well-written, informative history of a groundbreaking 20th-century volunteer organization.
Former International Voluntary Services workers provide insights into their organization in this detailed historical anthology.
A nonprofit organization founded in 1953, International Voluntary Services, according to former IVS volunteer and United States Ambassador to Pakistan Wendy J. Chamberlin, “occupies a special place as a pioneer for fielding volunteers” that served as a model for the Peace Corps and a host of subsequent NGOs. The anthology, divided into four sections, is a historical overview of IVS’s endeavors from the 1950s through the 2000s. While IVS was an officially nonsectarian organization, the anthology explains that many IVS members came from Mennonite, Quaker, and Christian pacifist backgrounds, and the organization offered an alternative approach to international relations in the wake of World War II and the start of the Cold War. In its half-century of activism, IVS sent volunteers on more than 1,400 assignments in almost 40 countries. Beginning with Section II, the book’s second half transitions from an organizational history to a grassroots exploration of the experiences of IVS volunteers thrust “out of their comfort zone” and into a post-colonial world that included newly independent nations as well as those (such as Vietnam) whose futures were still being fought for on battlefields. Sections III and IV offer reflections on IVS’s partnerships with other organizations, from churches to USAID, and a retrospective analysis on the organization’s legacy and implications for the future of international volunteerism. While edited by former members of the IVS (Alex, Chilton, and Benson), this is no mere organizational hagiography; it includes chapters written by history professors and other experts from academia who have no connection to IVS. Collectively, the book’s 12 chapters are backed by more than 20 pages of endnotes that demonstrate a firm grasp of the scholarly literature and make ample use of primary source material housed at the Mennonite Church USA archives. As in most co-authored anthologies, there is some repeated information across the chapters, but generally the book maintains its cohesiveness. Its readability is enhanced by an ample assortment of maps, charts, text-box vignettes, and useful appendix materials.
A well-written, informative history of a groundbreaking 20th-century volunteer organization.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2022
ISBN: 9781950444526
Page Count: 370
Publisher: Peace Corps Writers
Review Posted Online: Jan. 10, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
HISTORY | MODERN | WORLD | GENERAL HISTORY
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorker staff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
The powerful story of a father’s past and a son’s future.
Atlantic senior writer Coates (The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, 2008) offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son’s life. “I am wounded,” he writes. “I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.” Coates grew up in the tough neighborhood of West Baltimore, beaten into obedience by his father. “I was a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked,” he remembers, “but powerfully afraid.” His life changed dramatically at Howard University, where his father taught and from which several siblings graduated. Howard, he writes, “had always been one of the most critical gathering posts for black people.” He calls it The Mecca, and its faculty and his fellow students expanded his horizons, helping him to understand “that the black world was its own thing, more than a photo-negative of the people who believe they are white.” Coates refers repeatedly to whites’ insistence on their exclusive racial identity; he realizes now “that nothing so essentialist as race” divides people, but rather “the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named matters more than anything we could ever actually do.” After he married, the author’s world widened again in New York, and later in Paris, where he finally felt extricated from white America’s exploitative, consumerist dreams. He came to understand that “race” does not fully explain “the breach between the world and me,” yet race exerts a crucial force, and young blacks like his son are vulnerable and endangered by “majoritarian bandits.” Coates desperately wants his son to be able to live “apart from fear—even apart from me.”
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”Pub Date: July 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9354-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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