BIKE RIDING IN KABUL

In this memoir, a woman recounts her experiences as an international legal adviser in countries burdened by war and poverty.

Bowman spent 15 years working as a lawyer in the American mortgage industry but became disillusioned by lending models that were increasingly not “ethical or sustainable.” As a result, she pivoted away from the comfortable predictability of her profession and took a job in Micronesia, but she found her work unchallenging and island life far too leisurely. She fixed both problems with her next assignment: working for USAID in Pristina, Kosovo, writing mortgage laws, a much more adventurous post. There, she encountered a difficulty that forms one of the central themes of her remembrance—the tension between American and European powers trying to shape these post-conflict nations, one that often rose to the level of unabashed acrimony, astutely depicted by the author. The reflexive and even thoughtless criticism of the United States took such a toll on Bowman that she finally began to reconsider her new career. In response to suggestions that she had only just discovered America had detractors, she asserted: “No, I’ve known we’ve had critics. But I love my country and want other people to love it, too. Our countries are like our families. It’s fine for us to find fault with our own, but I don’t like it when other people feel free to criticize my family and expect me to agree and join in the condemnation.” Bowman thoughtfully recounts her experiences in Afghanistan, Ukraine, and Bangladesh, among others, furnishing perceptive commentary on the various cultures and histories of these nations ravaged by war and impoverishment. She writes with great lucidity and a breezy, anecdotal charm and harbors no idealistic pretensions about the work she does, however important. And while not everyone will be seduced by detailed descriptions of mortgage laws, there is much more to this surprisingly candid memoir, including danger and romance.

A splendid and intelligent recollection of an eventful law career.