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A TIME THAT WAS...

EXPERIENCES OF A PEACE CORPS VOLUNTEER IN PRE-REVOLUTIONARY LIBERIA, WEST AFRICA, 1962-1964

One of the thousands inspired by President John F. Kennedy’s “Ask what you can do for your country,” the author recounts his time in Liberia from 1962 to 1964.
As a Peace Corps volunteer, debut memoirist Salisbury (The Current Economic Crisis and the Great Depression, 2010, etc.) was sent to Liberia to teach at a public school. Primarily a reproduction of a journal made at the time, his book centers on the daily lives of ordinary villagers and the challenges, problems and rewards of teaching in a developing country. Too few teachers, too little money for equipment and too much political interference by government officials were ongoing challenges. Religious groups such as Jehovah’s Witnesses were persecuted, and the author saw members being savagely beaten. Liberian president William Tubman was in reality a dictator revered and feared in equal measure. Under his regime, no student activity went unscrutinized. For example, at the close of the school term, the pupils had to sing the national anthem. On one occasion, the principal interrupted and asked the students if they considered the national anthem to be a joke. He suggested that they remember what happened to the Jehovah’s Witnesses, and the anthem restarted “with a great deal more vigor” while the author’s stomach “turned over.” Women were treated as property and child bearers, and the gender ratio in classes was about eight boys to one girl. Pregnancies were a common problem. The issues here are heart-wrenching and important, but they’re buried in a morass of detail (is it important to know what time the author arose in the morning?). Editing could have reduced the book’s length by at least half to much better effect.
More an exercise in reproducing notes of 50 years ago than an analysis of a country before it became engulfed in civil war.

Pub Date: July 18, 2014

ISBN: 978-1493196029

Page Count: 244

Publisher: Xlibris

Review Posted Online: Sept. 18, 2014

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TO THE ONE I LOVE THE BEST

EPISODES FROM THE LIFE OF LADY MENDL (ELSIE DE WOLFE)

An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.

Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955

ISBN: 0670717797

Page Count: -

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955

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IN MY PLACE

From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)

Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992

ISBN: 0-374-17563-2

Page Count: 192

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992

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