Red Scarf Girl

Admittedly, I don’t know a lot about China.  It has certainly become much more important in the later half of my lifetime than it was in the first half.  I have always wanted to visit China, especially to see the famous Great Wall, which has captivated me since I first heard about it as a little kid.  Seeing some of the major sights would also be cool.  Such a trip once almost happened, but real life ended up getting in the way, and I’ve had to file that away in the “Some Day” folder.  I have also always known China as a Communist country even though it was Russia and Eastern Europe that seemed to grab all the Communist headlines during the first part of my life.  Tiananmen Square is something I remember quite well since it was broadcast into our living room, like it was for millions around the world.  China’s recent economic ascendancy has, unfortunately, been accompanied by continued restrictions on liberty that came with the introduction of Communism in that vast country.

Red Scarf Girl: A Memoir of the Cultural Revolution by Ji-li Jiang (ISBN: 978-0-06-446208-2) details one of the worst parts of China’s Communist history, the Cultural Revolution.  The book, a memoir, is told from the viewpoint of the author as the events unfolded.  Her family history included a well-to-do grandfather, a Muslim grandmother, and a father who had joined the Communist Party in its infancy when it was still illegal and then had a falling out with its leaders.  This put her at a disadvantage when Mao began the Cultural Revolution to retain his power (power struggles seem to be a fixture of Communist regimes) since her family was not considered “red” enough.  Ji-li was a true believer in Mao and the Revolution at the beginning of the book, but as things went along and friends and neighbors were denounced, goals and dreams shattered, lives ruined (or lost), and her own family affected, she came to understand that devotion to a cause or a leader should not trump one’s devotion to the truth and to one’s family.  Like many Chinese, she was later disappointed when she found out that the Cultural Revolution and all the damage it had done was not really to advance Communism, but to allow Chairman Mao to hang on to power.  Ji-li paints a descriptive picture of what life was like before the chaos, and it actually didn’t seem too bad.  When the Cultural Revolution starts, though, things change quickly and they change drastically, as all things old are thrown out.  Kids can no longer read comics, neighbors stop talking to each other and some look for ways to harm neighbors and former friends.  School is changed, favoring class status instead of merit.  Houses are ransacked, people imprisoned, beat, sometimes killed.  Hope is lost for many.  Some, like Ji-li’s father, resist heroically, never admitting to the accusations leveled falsely against him.  Life eventually settles down, but it’s never the same again, and even to a young girl, it’s obvious that there were freedoms and opportunities lost.

I found the book to be quite interesting and informative even though it is written as juvenile literature.  For those who know more about the history of China, the experience might not be the same.  I found it interesting to see so many similarities between other authoritarian regimes (I couldn’t help but remember the Taliban blowing up ancient statues in Afghanistan as I read about Chinese Red Guards destroying anything they felt like labeled “Four Olds”) and Leftist ideologies (anti-religious views and class and racial tension, for example).  It was sometimes a little jarring to read simply because the author narrated from her point of the view as the events unfolded.  This meant there is a lot of pro-Communist, even pro-Cultural Revolution sentiment expressed.  As noted, this wanes as the story progresses, but it sometimes makes one have to stop and think as one reads.  I see having to think things through and a need for analysis and evaluation as a good thing, though.  Here, the analysis of the author’s experiences leads to a greater appreciation for freedom and liberty, as well as, hopefully, a greater commitment to protect those values and to be kind to those around us.

   

This work, including all text, photographs, and other original work, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License and is copyrighted © MMXXI John Pruess.

Tower of Secrets

I’m not a big movie watcher, so I’ve never seen a Bond movie and pulp fiction rarely interests me (admittedly, I’ve read the original Bourne books — and liked them better than the movies, of course), but I know that bad-guy Russians, usually affiliated with the KGB play a role in at least some of those movies and a lot of fictional spy thrillers.  It, of course, fits well with the Cold War that wasn’t so much a motif through the 1980s, but real life.  It’s an easy way to capture people’s imaginations and draw them into a story.  What has always been even more intriguing than those stories, though, is real life.  I remember Cuban and Eastern European athletes defecting during international competitions and thought that was brave of them.  Movies like Night Crossing regular people defecting had an even larger impact on me.  These people knew the value of freedom and were willing to risk their lives for it.

Tower of Secrets: A Real Life Spy Thriller by Victor Sheymov (ISBN: 978-0-9858930-4-0) is a story more in line with stories of regular people defecting than athletes, but Sheymov wasn’t exactly a regular guy.  He was an officer in one of the Soviet security agencies, the same KGB that was the subject of so much Western fiction.  The KGB he describes in the book often sounds much more like what one imagines working in the IRS or some other boring bureaucratic organization would be like, but he also talks about the things the KGB is more famous for.  Sheymov described his life abroad as an employee of the Soviet Union, working to protect the Soviets’ state secrets and he described his life at home in the Soviet Union.  I found both of them to be rather interesting portrayals of life.  He tells of both the good and the bad, lending an air of credibility to the work.  Eventually, Sheymov and his wife start to question the system they live in.  This is especially shocking to Sheymov himself because he works as part of the system and some of his initial resistance to going against that system is the result of the privilege it has afforded him and his family.  Finally, though, they come to the realization that whatever positives they get from the communist system don’t outweigh the negatives for themselves, their daughter, and for people around them.  The USSR was pretty locked down, though, especially for someone working for the government.  Sheymov and his wife cooked up a plan to get out, but had to make contact with a Western intelligence agency to make that work.  He chose the Americans and ran a risky operation by himself while on a business trip to Poland, where he disguised himself, hopped out a bathroom window, walked into the American embassy, and then returned to his comrades.  Sometime later, more disguises, a train journey, riding in a car with false spaces under the back seats, and smugglers all played a role in getting the Sheymovs to the West.

I enjoyed reading the book.  I found a few similarities to Next Stop Execution: some good descriptions of everyday Soviet life that grounded the book and made it interesting for those of us who weren’t there and some of the discussions about working for what was the world’s most feared intelligence service were neat to read.  I also found the authors’ egoism to be similar.  This book also suffers from being self-published, so there are more than a handful of typos, which can be kind of distracting.  The story of getting that first contact with the Americans set up and then the plan to get the Sheymovs out of the USSR, though, was gripping stuff and well worth the read.  Just like the book’s subtitle promises, it was just like a good story and less like a memoir.  Sheymov’s discussion of his ideological change was also very interesting and it involved various aspects of life.  He accurately noted that communism promised security and justice, but did so at a great price: freedom, both economic and intellectual.  He also grappled with the knowledge that communism has killed many thousands of people, oddly, in the name of equality.  Socialism, in the end, is built for preventing others from succeeding instead of helping people achieve.  These accurate criticisms of socialism and communism are extremely relevant today and serve as the most powerful of Sheymov’s fun and educational book.

   

This work, including all text, photographs, and other original work, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives 3.0 License and is copyrighted © MMXIV John Pruess.

Next Stop Execution

If one spends very much time doing anything connected to Russia, the topic of spies will undoubtedly come up.  As one who was born before the Cold War had ended and as one who served a church mission in Russia, Russian spies are something I’ve often heard about.  On my mission, I served in the mission office for a while.  Missionaries who were serving in the city of Kaliningrad (I, sadly, have never been able to visit that intriguing place) once sent the office a copy of an editorial cartoon published in a local newspaper that depicted missionaries for our church asking local Russians about missiles.  Thanks to the Cold War, all Americans knew there was a vast intelligence complex in Russia, bent on suppressing dissent in Russia and recruiting spies abroad.  It seems that the American news has often dealt with the topic, too, thanks to traitors like Robert Hannsen and Edward Snowden or people that catch the media’s attention like Anna Chapman.  There have been a few Russians willing to help the West, though, even if we seem to not hear as much about them.

Next Stop Execution by Oleg Gordievsky is the account of one of those Russians.  The book is an autobiography or memoir, and takes the reader through Gordievsky’s life from his early childhood to his post-defection life in England.  He seemed to have a fairly normal childhood, although his father was somewhat enigmatic since his father worked for Stalin’s intelligence organ, the NKVD.  Gordievsky did well in school and happily joined up when the intelligence services came calling.  He enjoyed being pushed by his training and quickly assimilated to the system, including bureaucratic idiosyncrasies.  He had a talent for languages, and ended up being posted abroad, where he enjoyed life and started to get a taste for Western democracy.  Gordievsky chronicles his home life, including an unsatisfying first marriage and then a second marriage.  He explains how he had suspicions about inefficiencies in the Soviet system and outright lies about Communist doctrine early in his training since he had access to Western publications.  Those doubts didn’t lead to much until he saw the Berlin Wall go up and Czechoslovakia invaded.  After that, he decided to take action and responded positively to overtures from the British and Danish intelligence services.  Eventually, he would go on to spy for quite a while for the UK, before being outed.  He says he figured out on his own that something was about to go down since he was unexpectedly called back to Moscow from London, where he had been posted.  Gordievsky made the decision to get out of Russia then and there.  He left his wife and kids, surviving extended family, and homeland with the help of the UK via a harrowing ride to Finland.  That story includes all the stuff of movies, including being smuggled across borders in the trunk of a car.  Gordievsky’s life in the UK, he says, has been interesting, presenting information to many Western governments, but not without some sadness since his longtime separation from his second wife resulted in them splitting up.

The book was interesting and a good read.  I enjoyed reading about his childhood and schooling and probably could’ve handled more information about everyday life in the post-WWII Soviet Union.  Having lived in Russia as a missionary and having experienced everyday Russia, information expanding my views on that is always nice to have.  I enjoyed reading about some of his disdain for the processes his agencies made their employees go through.  As an American, I often participate in the time-honored tradition of complaining about bureaucracy, and it was good to see that Russians do the same.  The middle part of the book, about his work and home life, was maybe a little less interesting, and I thought a little on the egotistical side.  His philosophical evolution was interesting to read about, especially from the standpoint of current international relations.  He was intrigued by the West because of democracy and economic opportunity.  It is worth asking is we are doing all we can today to preserve those two ideals.  The final section of Gordievsky’s book, about being hunted by his own employer and his escape to freedom, was riveting, although, as mentioned above, a bit sad because of the need to leave his family behind.  That, too, though, is a lesson, not unique to this book, about the value of liberty and the need to sacrifice in order to have liberty.

This work, including all text, photographs, and other original work, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives 3.0 License and is copyrighted © MMXIV John Pruess.

I Am Malala

One didn’t hear much about the Taliban before the infamous events of September 11th, 2001, even if one was relatively informed and kept up with the news.  Here and there, they made the news as they continued to make living in Afghanistan less and less desirable, but they weren’t an every-day item.  In my mind, they were most famous for blowing up the Buddhas of Bamyan.  With al-Qaeda’s attacks, though, things changed and changed quickly.  Afghanistan became a military target for the U.S., putting the Taliban in the crosshairs.  With the interconnectedness and fluidity of the region, it was easy for many Taliban members to cross borders and blend into society elsewhere, including Pakistan, where they had already had a small presence since the mid 1990s.  After September 11th and as the Taliban went international, they were in the news every day, and when Taliban gunmen shot a girl named Malala in Pakistan, both the Islamist Taliban and the girl became household names around the world.

I Am Malala by Malala Yousafzai (ISBN: 978-0-297-87092-0) is the story of the schoolgirl from the time she was a little girl to the beginning of her recovery in England.  The book starts with her young childhood and takes the reader through day she was shot in great detail.  Interwoven into her discussion of cricket with friends, friendly competition among classmates, and trips to ancestral villages to visit extended family are brief lessons on Pakistani history and geography, which adequately set the stage for Malala’s life and what would become important to her as she got older.  Far away from the bigger cities where more liberal attitudes existed, life in the villages of Swat went on much like it had for centuries, following traditional Islamic custom.  Malala’s father was a trend-setter in many ways and surrounded himself with others who wanted to see progress in the field of education.  He believed everyone should have an education.  He also didn’t have a lot of use for many of the traditions that prevented women from freely moving about, going to school, or otherwise expressing themselves.  His oldest daughter followed in his footsteps and was nationally prominent by the time she was of junior high age, having won a few national awards, having met with various Pakistani dignitaries on the way.  She enjoyed school, enjoyed learning, and wished everyone had the same opportunity.  She saw how the lack of such opportunities negatively affected others in her community, including her own mother, who was illiterate.  She and two others were shot by Taliban gunmen in 2012, and because she needed long-term intensive care and was under continued threat, she and her family were evacuated to the UK, where they have lived ever since.

I was unsure how I would react to this book.  It was wildly popular a few years ago, but I was reluctant to read it, thinking it would push either Islam or women’s rights in an overbearing fashion.  It did neither and was refreshing in its agenda-free message.  I didn’t know that the Taliban shooting was not indiscriminate.  She was a very specific target thanks to her involvement in Pakistan in trying to get women and girls more involved in education.  (If nothing else, it rubbed off on her mom, who had begun reading lessons near the end of the book.)  While I got the impression that Malala was and is a devout Muslim, she seemed to have a “big-tent“ mentality, simply explaining and never criticizing (other than Taliban policy and actions).  Women in burqas and bazaar dancers were equal in her eyes.  In a world where many in the West are looking for the moderate Muslim voice, this may be one of them.  Her same level-headedness came through in her discussion of women and girls and schooling.  She saw the advantages that it afforded and wanted all to be able to participate.  Neither poverty nor tradition should stand in the way of those who wanted to go to school.  Such a concept seems so basic to Westerners and one that fits well into the idea of equal opportunity, but stories like this show that there is much to yet to be done in spreading these basic norms around the world (and not forgetting them at home at the same time).

This work, including all text, photographs, and other original work, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives 3.0 License and is copyrighted © MMXIV John Pruess.

A River in Darkness

Asia is not usually high on my list of interests.  I have always wanted to visit Japan (likely linked to my dad’s serving as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints there) and I’ve always wanted to visit the famous sights in China.  I once had the opportunity to visit Bangkok, and while I enjoyed it, it was very different from anything I had ever experienced before.  I don’t know a lot about the region in general, but have never been a big fan of North Korea.  Once European Communism fell in the late ’80s and early ’90s, places like Cuba and North Korea have seemed like time warps, holding out unnecessarily while continuing to oppress people.  When people make the decision to try to leave those places, I always find it to be one I can sympathize with.

A River in Darkness: One Man's Escape from North Korea by Masaji Ishikawa (ISBN: 978-1-5420-4719-7) is just such a tale, although it does have an interesting twist.  The author was not born in North Korea; in fact, he was born in Japan and was ethnically half Japanese.  His dad, who was not native to Japan, moved his family to North Korea under pressure from ethnic compatriots and the pressure of being an ethnic minority in re-building, post-war Japan, where such minorities weren’t always welcome.  The promises of the Communist utopia were very quickly discovered to be a total sham by the author and his family.  However, there was no real opportunity to get out.  The author's family had nothing to offer the Communist Party, so they lived as peasants, eventually finding that living under the radar of the authorities was easier than trying to conform to the system in North Korea.  Eventually, Ishikawa tires of the poverty, starvation, racism, hypocritical inequality, and lack of freedom.  He heads toward the border with China, fearful, but determined to make a break for it since, although that would mean an uncertain future, it was better than the future he could easily predict inside North Korea.  He made it to China, eventually linking up with the Japanese embassy there, which, with great difficulty, helped exfiltrate him to Japan.  Once back, Japan had jumped forward forty or so years, while North Korea had steadily gone backward.  Ishikawa struggled to adjust and felt abandoned by Japan.

The book was interesting, but disheartening.  Ishikawa's childhood is not an easy one, with alcohol abuse and physical abuse having large roles.  The move to North Korea is understandable only from his father's point of view.  Once there, even his father grows disillusioned with their new country, but like so many people in totalitarian, socialist regimes, he never felt empowered or free enough to do anything about his situation.  North Korea is bleak from the family's arrival to the very last page of the book.  The descriptions of life there are simple, yet vivid and powerful.  Readers are drawn in to the dark, gloomy, depressing lives of the underclass in North Korea.  In a way, it like reading Dostoevsky, but it was real.  The story of the escape was a breath of fresh air and involved some risks, risk-takers, and genuinely good people.  Movement between Japanese diplomatic facilities and the flight to Japan have a spy story quality to them.  Ishikawa's return to Japan and struggle to fit in again returns the reader to the more depressing side of the book.  What is clear by the end of the book is that North Korea is an anachronism and deserved its place on George Bush's “axis of evil.”  The book, like other, similar memoirs, serves as a warning against the lack of freedoms engendered by socialist governments everywhere and the positive, although imperfect, results of the free market and capitalism.

This work, including all text, photographs, and other original work, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives 3.0 License and is copyrighted © MMXIV John Pruess.

The Smoked Yank

While reading A P.O.W.’s Story, I learned that an entire body of literature exists about the time people spent in P.O.W. camps, concentration camps, and the like outside of the Holocaust and outside of the Soviet gulag.  Since man’s inhumane treatment of his fellow man seems to be as old as time, many of these works are also quite old, including a number exploring P.O.W. prisons during the American Civil War.  I have never been a huge Civil War buff, but I do hold an appreciation for the role it has played in America’s great history.  Some of that appreciation has been gained while visiting the famous battlefields like Gettysburg and Manassas.  Some has come from reading and coming to better understand the conflict and the stakes at hand.

The Smoked Yank by Melvin Grigsby (available for free from Google Books), tells the story of one soldier’s time in the Confederate P.O.W. prison in Andersonville, Georgia.  It is really the author’s entire wartime experience, so we learn about his role in the Union cavalry before being captured, his time in Andersonville and other prisons, and, then, his time on the run as an escaped prisoner.  The account is very interesting and quite adventurous as there are battles, chases, escapes, secret plots, first love, hide-outs, and a happy ending.  The author was a patriotic Northerner who believed that black people deserved better treatment.  He left school to join the army.  He fought honorably in the cavalry before being captured.  His initial few months as a P.O.W. were sometimes uncomfortable, but not too much trouble, as he and the other men were treated more-or-less humanely.  Some Southerners were even kind enough to provide supplies to the prisoners or lend them books.  Later, though, they were transferred to Andersonville.  The prisoners didn’t know what awaited them there, but they soon found out.  Hygiene was almost non-existent thanks to swampland that served as a latrine for a camp that often housed triple (or more) the number of people it was designed for.  Food was in drastic short supply.  Disease, which was the number one killer in the war, raged in the camp, too.  There were also executions of the Union soldiers, which the author didn’t seem to find too out of line, and Union-on-Union violence, which is one of the larger subtexts to the prison’s story in later academic studies of the prison.  Eventually, the author finds a way to make his escape, and then spends (if I was following things correctly) a few months on the road running from Rebels back to the North.  The story of the escape is just as intriguing as his time in Andersonville, if not more so.  He is helped at almost every turn by the slaves, who, with one notable exception, are grateful for the Northerners’ sacrifices in securing their freedom.  There are many close calls, a lot of time spent hidden away in the swamplands of the South, and a lot of risk.  Eventually, the author makes it back to his family in the North.

I enjoyed the book and, as mentioned, thought it had a nice mix of information and adventure in the telling of the story.  I was, maybe, a little underwhelmed by the author’s description of the infamous prison, but I think his experience, which was not as lengthy as that of many others, was a little different.  It was very similar to other stories in the same vein because Grigsby was someone who wasn’t going to let things just happen to him.  He was always looking for the next way out, the next work party join, or the next scheme inside the prison yard to stay active.  The story of his escape, which simply would not have been possible were it not for the help of what was essentially the Underground Railroad, although he never called it that, was a highlight for me.  It seemed the good in the human spirit was on display as so many people, who were still technically slaves, opened their homes to a white man and provided him with food, blankets, medicine, sometimes at great personal risk.  Like most good books, this one had a few good lessons packaged inside an intriguing and inspiring story of adventure.

This work, including all text, photographs, and other original work, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives 3.0 License and is copyrighted © MMXIV John Pruess.

Dachau and the Nazi Terror

. . . humanity — that is, resistance against [a] system forced upon the people . . .
 — Hermann Langbein

I was ashamed of my passivity and ignorance.

This was where the path of an unpolitical person living in seclusion led.

Helpless and lost, one is dragged along by the raging torrent.
 — Ladislaus Ervin-Deutsch

When I was a kid, World War II held a certain fascination for me, but it wasn’t really the war that was interesting, but the machines and planes that were used throughout the war.  I really liked to draw, and the large bombers, small fighters, and intriguing, unique vehicles like half-tracks, captured my young imagination and were some of the most common subjects of my early attempts at artwork.  As I got older, I came to better understand the horrors associated with World War II, including the Holocaust and the atrocities committed by the Empire of Japan.  There were also all the battles throughout the world that caused so many deaths and so much destruction.  I got a better understanding of the scale of that destruction while visiting Germany at the end of my mission to Russia.  I was also able to visit Dachau and get a small idea of the scale of the horror of the Holocaust.

Dachau and the Nazi Terror: 1933–1945: Testimonies and Memoirs edited by Wolfgang Benz and Barbara Distel (ISBN: 3-9808587-0-7) is a collection of memoirs written up by a variety of people who, in some way, experienced the Nazi concentration camps.  The volume contains thoughts from a couple different German Jews, a member of the French resistance, American liberators, Jews from other parts of Europe, including Poland, what was then Czechoslovakia, and even the further-away Latvia.  It was interesting to read the variety of experiences.  The common denominators were that everyone, sooner or later, experienced the terror of the concentration camps and that the vast majority of those interred were there because of their ethnicity or because of their political beliefs.  Other than the two short testimonies provided by American liberators, each of the former prisoners discussed the drudgery of prison life, the daily struggle for life that got harder and harder the longer the war dragged on, and extreme contrast between the brutality of so many and the kindness of a few soldiers and citizens who rose above the prevailing patterns of thought and behavior.  It was interesting to read about the various commentators’ lives before and during the war, their varying degrees of commitment to their religious or political ideals, and their varied responses to life in the concentration camps.

The book is, obviously, likely to be tough reading for some.  It is, nevertheless, extremely interesting and full, I found, of lessons.  I was impressed with the strength of all those who wrote.  Writing or speaking about such experiences is not often easy, but it is important, and I am glad these people made it happen.  Without their voices, the lessons of time are lost and forgotten.  It is said that if a people does not learn from history, it is bound to repeat history’s mistakes.  That thought did not leave me for one second as I read this book.  Entire peoples were slated for extermination simply because of their ethnicity.  An official policy of discrimination and hate was enacted by a government simply because someone looked different or had a different ethnic background.  In addition to the ethnic hatred, there was political intolerance and hatred.  People who thought differently than the official line were first ostracized, then imprisoned, and then killed.  The Nazis, socialists, had no love for the communists.  I, too, don’t agree with the tenets of communism, but as I read, I found it horrible that the marketplace of ideas wasn’t allowed to let people say their piece and have others make their own choices on accepting or rejecting those ideas.  Especially troubling was the experience of one prisoner who went from the Nazi concentration camps to the Russian gulag.  Both of the intolerant positions described above have similarities to what we see in politics today.  Another lesson to be learned from the memoirists is that political involvement is key.  One writer mournfully noted that he had always been apolitical, the same as so many of the people he knew.  That lack of involvement, he figured, had allowed the minority to take control and take things in such a negative direction.  A third lesson worth mentioning (although there are more) is that the writers did not display any hatred.  One told of coming across one of his former guards after being liberated.  While some of the prisoners did act out violently toward this former guard, some of the Jews, including the writer, turned away from the scene and did not take their turn attacking the man even though they could have easily made the case that they were justified in doing so.  Many writers commented fondly on the guards that treated them humanely or the civilians who risked punishment, but, all the same, tried to help the prisoners.  The prisoners often looked for opportunities to see the good around them and to persevere even in the face of intense trial.  One noted that this was a characteristic present in many of those who survived.  That is a powerful lesson for us.

This work, including all text, photographs, and other original work, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives 3.0 License and is copyrighted © MMXIV John Pruess.

A P.O.W.’s Story

This policy of “communistic humanitarianism” was not invented for the POWs.  It was the standard policy of treatment toward their own people as well.  Play ball with the party or get your skull crushed in!  Here was a policy that held no promise for individual rights and freedom, the dream of all people, but instead threatened punishment for nonconformity to a dehumanizing system.  It was a dirty blanket thrown over the heads of the people, to extend absolute control over them, depriving them of their individuality and eliminating personal initiative to strive for a better life.
The Vietnam War is one I — probably to my detriment — know little about.  It is skipped over in American high school with little more than a few comments about just what the word “quagmire” means and how it was an example of American — sometimes described as “imperialist” — overreach.  I think that is the prevailing opinion of most people born since about 1970.  As I have watched events unfold in my lifetime, and especially since September 11th, I have come to question that well-established assessment a little more.  Couple that line of thought with a natural interest in history, and stuff about one of America’s forgotten wars has caught my eye a little.

A P.O.W.’s Story: 2801 Days in Hanoi by Larry Guarino (ISBN: 0-449-00099-0) is one POW’s memories of his time as a prisoner during the Vietnam War.  The book, essentially a memoir, described Guarino’s memories of his experiences as a prisoner of war in Vietnam.  He describes many aspects of the experience from the mundane everyday to the surreal to the explosive.  The reader learns about going to the bathroom as a POW, being used in a propaganda film, and the cruel torture sessions.  The majority of POWs lived true to the code of honor that the U.S. military asked them to live by, doing all that was in their power to stymie the Vietcong.  They thought up codes and other ways of communicating, they went on hunger strikes, they frustrated the Vietnamese attempts at using the POWs in propaganda, and they held out as long as they could under torture.  For some, the results were deathly or resulted in lifelong crippling.  For all, there were ghosts that lingered long after the war.  The story told chronologically and had a lot more detail in the beginning; toward the end it was just more of the same.  The detailed view into life as a POW included a view light moments, too.  Eventually, the war is over and repatriation becomes real, not just a dream.

A memoir may not be the most academically rigorous place to start one’s exploration of the Vietnam War, but the book was available for free, and, if nothing else, sparked a greater interest.  I was appreciative of Guarino’s openness about some aspects of the whole situation.  He noted that each POW could tell his own story and that, because everyone’s experiences are different and are interpreted in our own minds differently, each story would be unique.  He understood that not all men could hold out as he did and that he himself was not as strong as others.  He and the other POWs respected all who put forth their best efforts.  I found him to be open-minded and respectful of differing viewpoints.  He realized that America afforded all people the chance to think as we like, and he claimed (and I believe him) to have no problem with people who were against the war, only those who took steps to aid and abet the enemy.  It seemed a fair viewpoint.  I was struck by the dedication and commitment shown by many of the POWs.  Since there were hundreds of POWs, I can’t be certain, but my impression was that a majority came out and, sooner or later, carried on with life.  It seems that, as with most things, they just made them different back then.  Most of the men were simply doing what their country asked of them.  Most of them understood or came to understand that Communism was a mess and stood for everything that America didn’t.  War, of course, is a messy business, one better off left untouched, so before making too many judgements on this one, I’d like to learn more, and Guarino’s book helped stoke that interest, both because of the personal stories and because of the larger geopolitical issues at stake.

This work, including all text, photographs, and other original work, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives 3.0 License and is copyrighted © MMXIV John Pruess.

A Captain's Duty

Pirates are a fascinating subject and the subject of many a young boy's imagination.  I was fortunate enough to grow up when reading was still somewhat popular and encouraged by parents, so I read classics like Treasure Island more than once as a kid.  There was, of course, a certain romanticism about such stories that may not have been real, but it made for great reading and even better pretend play later with plastic swords, skull-and-cross-bones flags and costumes.

In the early 2000s, as people in poor countries got desparate and the security situation deteriorated in many parts of the world, piracy made a comeback.  There was nothing romantic about it, and it didn't involve the big ships with masts and sails, but usually small boats and a couple Russian-made machine guns instead of swords.  A Captain's Duty: Somali Pirates, Navy SEALs, and Dangerous Days at Sea (ISBN: 978-1-4013-1044-8) by Richard Phillips with Stephan Talty tells one such story with a happy ending for the good guys.  Phillips and his crew made international news when Somali pirates boarded the ship he was captain of and took him hostage.  He preserved the lives of his crew and saved his ship, but felt it was likely that he would end up sacrificing his life for that.  After a few harrowing days at sea with the pirates in one of the ship's lifeboats, U.S. Navy SEALs rescued Phillips and killed the pirates in a stroke of incredible marksmanship.  The book also includes a little bit of the story of what Phillips's wife and family were going through during the ordeal.

The book was an easy read, in part because it was interesting.  I read through it quickly, but with great interest even though I knew what was going to happen, both because I read the headlines just like everyone else when this happened, but because I'd seen the movie about the events, too.  Still, it was good to get the story from the captain himself, as it's always a little different than second-hand through the media or a filmmaker.  I wasn't as interested in the homefront aspect of the story, but it is a real dimension of the story that cannot be dismissed.  There were a couple holes in the story, such as whatever happened to the lead pirate and how he came to have Navy gear, which is something that is alluded to over and over, but never fully explained.  I could've handled less R-rated language, too, but it seems that these days, people don't know how to express emotion any other way, which is sad.  These shortcomings notwithstanding, I enjoyed the story.

This work, including all text, photographs, and other original work, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives 3.0 License and is copyrighted © MMXIV John Pruess.

Rise and Fall

Yugoslavia did not play a large role in my life until I came to Sarajevo for work.  I was too young, really, for the 1984 Olympics to mean anything.  I vaguely remember the old, small, black-and-white television showing ice skating competitions from the games.  Later, I learned that Yugoslavia was part of the Communist bloc.  Beyond that, I knew nothing of it and heard nothing of it until the 1990s, when it all, quite literally, blew up.  War, ethnic cleansing, and genocide are probably not what the peoples of this Balkan region wanted to have help them get on the map, so to speak, but it did.  There has been no shooting here for twenty years, but when people learn that I am working in Sarajevo, 90% of the time, they ask about the war and if that makes it a problem to live, work, and play in Sarajevo.  The effects, of course, do, but the war, of course, does not.

Rise and Fall by Milovan Djilas (ISBN: 0-15-177572-9) provides one man’s (Djilas (Đilas) himself) view of the Communist rise to power in Yugoslavia.  Since he was one of Tito’s closest aides and advisors, he provides an inside perspective that is largely unrivaled.  He also chronicles what he considers the falling away of the Yugoslav Communists from their revolutionary ideals.  As he comes to realize that Communism, as implemented in Yugoslavia, isn’t what was promised, he becomes disillusioned with it, enough so that he published material critical of Tito and the Communists, leading to nine years as a political prisoner.  Djilas covers a lot of ground in a little over 400 pages.  He gives a short account of the wartime Communists, but mostly focuses on life under Tito after the war.  He talks about foreign relations, internal politics, bizarre Communist Party perks like special stores for the elite party members, the cult of personality surrounding Tito, and the oppressive nature of a totalitarian or dictatorial political system.  Interestingly, Djilas’s falling out was not with Communism; it was with what Communism had developed into in Yugoslavia.  The reader even gets a small glimpse into Djilas’s personal life as he discusses his marriages.  Finally, the totalitarian oppression claims the once high-ranking government official and he spends almost a decade as a prisoner because of his ideas, not necessarily even that radical.

If one wants to study Yugoslav history at all, this is likely not the appropriate place to start.  Djilas made his name in the West because he was considered a dissident in a system that the West saw as inherently evil (rightly so) even though he was not proposing anything radical and certainly not a departure from Communism.  While that contributes to my thinking that Djilas was not the best person to take up as any kind of symbol or hero of the opposition in Yugoslavia, that is what happened, and this book is one of the results.  It assumes a certain level of familiarity with the history of Yugoslavia, which, if one lacks, results in a rather dry read in places.  On the other hand, the intimate insider view of things is appreciated and unique.  I found his discussion of Yugoslavia’s short-lived falling out with Russia fascinating.  Many modern Serbs, Croats, and Bosnians paint Yugoslavia as different from many of the other Eastern bloc countries for a few different reasons.  One of those reasons, they proudly proclaim, is that they weren’t just a puppet state of the U.S.S.R., like the Warsaw Pact nations.  Reading Djilas’s take, Yugoslavia towed the line set by Moscow as much as it could, so things really weren’t that different.  Those types of insights made for an interesting read.

This work, including all text, photographs, and other original work, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives 3.0 License and is copyrighted © MMXIV John Pruess.

Surviving Hitler

World War II has always been fascinating to me.  As a kid, it was simply the aircraft and other military hardware that intrigued me.  Outside of the big bombers, I especially found half-tracks to be interesting.  Another thing that is interesting about World War II is that the Axis and Allies alliances were clear and were fighting for a clear right and wrong.  It makes it easy to read about the bold heroes that risked their lives, often losing them, fighting for what was right.  The resistance fighters, brave soldiers, everyday people joining the underground, and those who had the physical and mental stamina to survive the truly horrid death camps were heroes to be admired.  Their steadfastness in selflessly choosing the right is to be copied.  I have no question of that today, but sensed it even as a young child.

Surviving Hitler: The Unlikely True Story of an SS Soldier and a Jewish Woman by O. Håkan Palm (ISBN: 978-1-60907-847-8) tells the story of two of the everyday people that made it through the horrors of war.  A memoir- or journal-style narrative takes the reader through the lives of the young woman, Agnes Erdös, a Hungarian ethnic Jew, and Gustav Palm, a Norwegian, as World War II placed its heavy imprint on their lives.  The Germans invaded Norway and Gustav joined the German army.  He was a good soldier who had luck on his side a couple times.  Agnes was raised in a well-to-do family, but as Hungary fell to the occupying forces, her life abruptly changed, and she ended up as one of the many in the Nazi concentration camps.  Sheer determination, coupled with a strength fortified by faith in God, got her through that most awful experience.  Through a series of events, both of them found themselves in Scandinavia after the war, trying to put their lives back together.  They met each other, fell in love, and were married.  Part of the healing process was a search for ultimate truth, and they found the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  There are some reminiscences from the author, the couple’s son that makes it seem that the healing process was a slow and often painful one, but these good people, who had endured much, forged on, helping others throughout the rest of their lives, ultimately conquering the scars of war.

Overall, the book was an enjoyable read, which is probably a little more of an endorsement than I thought I would be giving when I first opened it.  The reason I didn’t think I’d like it when I started is because of the journal-like format where you read a chapter from one person’s point of view, then a chapter from the others, and then back again.  It makes it seem a bit fluffier and not the kind of solid history book I would normally want to read.  I found it an interesting story, though, and maybe a first-hand account isn’t so bad since more thorough and scholarly histories have already been written.  This gives a unique voice to one of the many different aspects of the terrible war.  Notwithstanding my enjoyment of the book, I still think the title is a little sensationalist.  Gustav, the SS soldier in the story, was not a German Nazi bent on the extermination of the Jews or some other hateful ideology.  He was a young man who made what turned out to be an ill-fated decision.  At the time, he made the best decision he could based on what he knew.  It just so happened that he fought for the Germans.  In some notes to the book, someone explained that President Thomas S. Monson had met the couple and encouraged them to turn their story into a book.  I am not sure what he saw in the story, but my guess is that it was something similar to me — a story that makes the power of the atonement and the miracle of forgiveness that much more real.  For a different look at the war and bit of a human interest angle, the book is an interesting and quick read.

This work, including all text, photographs, and other original work, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives 3.0 License and is copyrighted © MMXIV John Pruess.

American Sniper

I am pretty old.  I don’t always feel it, but I am.  There are a couple ways I can tell this.  First, in high school and college, I played a lot of basketball and volleyball.  The first year home from my mission I played a lot of basketball.  I remember playing for hours on end on the courts at BYU’s now-demolished Deseret Towers.  I could do that every day.  Nowadays, on the rare occasion that I even get to play decent basketball, my skills have atrophied and I feel the effects of a couple hours of running around when I wake up the next day.  Second, I remember sometimes running around the neighborhood with friends carrying plastic machine guns.  We were often policemen or soldiers as we stole around a corner or pushed or way through low-growing brush in an empty lot.  Nowadays, guns kill people, not the person pulling the trigger, and helicopter parents everywhere try to keep their kids from touching anything even remotely gun-like.  My current, mundane desk job is a far cry from the excitement imagined as a kid on the NBA hardwoods or as an elite soldier racing down a zip line suspended from a helicopter in enemy territory, but sometimes it’s interesting to re-visit those day dreams.

American Sniper by Chris Kyle (ISBN: 978-0-06-223886-3) is a book that does just that.  It also visits, in a very personal way, the other realities of being a soldier, such as separation from friends and family, and the stress that comes from that and from always being in such high-adrenaline situations in war zones.  The book is the first-hand account of a Navy SEAL and his experiences throughout his time in the service of his country and his fellow man.  It follows him from high school to his helping form a company to train other security professionals once he got out of the military.  Most of the details in the book come during his time as a sniper in Iraq.  He explains how the American soldiers went about their business in the hostile areas where they operated.  He explains what goes through a soldier’s mind before, during, and after action.  He goes through the extremely painful process of losing a friend in battle.  The book also describes the heroic efforts of those who were seriously injured to work hard to overcome their new disabilities and make something of their lives.  Readers are let in, to a certain degree, to the psyche of the author as he describes, mostly in general terms, his philosophy on life and on some of the things he did while in the Navy.  There’s a little fun along the way, but the journey is mostly hard work, a lot of sweat, and quite a bit of blood, too.

I remember hearing about the book a couple years ago, but not being super interested at the time.  Then someone decided to make a movie.  Books are always better than movies, so I got a copy of the book.  For the most part, it was pretty gripping.  It’s pretty much all action all the time (and includes all the typical foul language of a modern soldier’s memoir).  Even the parts where Kyle tells about being at home and dealing with his wife and children have an edge to them because he was on edge and not always dealing with his struggles in the best way.  In the end, he learns a lot from what he goes through and definitely becomes a better person, especially in his family life, and that was neat to read.  The war sequences are very interesting.  They are fascinating to me because I have never experienced anything like them.  Kyle makes a simple case for his belief that what he and the rest of the U.S. military were doing was right, and that was interesting to read, too.  It really had only two points.  First, by engaging America’s enemies on their home turf, they had little to no opportunity to engage us on ours.  Second, the people America was fighting against were people who wanted to kill Americans and subject others to their will.  The soldiers felt they were protecting Americans and helping the Iraqi people be able to live according to the desires of their consciences.  It was really that simple for him.  It’s that simple for us, too, and I am thankful that men like Chris Kyle were willing to put their lives on the line for the rest of us.  It is a sad subscript to the book that Kyle was killed a few years after writing the book by a former soldier he was trying to help, using his own experiences as something to learn from, re-adjust to civilian life.

This work, including all text, photographs, and other original work, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives 3.0 License and is copyrighted © MMXIV John Pruess.

Spy Dust

The world of spies, probably because it’s so shrouded in mystery, has always been intriguing.  I think this holds true for most people, as evidenced by the abundance of books advertising themselves as historically accurate as well as the standard fiction.  Both genres have seen success as movies.  My interest in spies typically does not dwell in the world of fiction, but in the realm of history and current events, although I did read and mostly enjoy the original Bourne trilogy.  World War II and the Cold War have always interested me, and that is also true as far as spying goes.  I actually heard about the book Spy Dust a few years ago, but never read it, thinking the title was maybe just a little bit too outlandish to really be about something that was real.  (It turns out that it really is a real thing and something not just used by intelligence services, but police departments, too.)

In Spy Dust: Two Masters of Disguise Reveal the Tools and Operations That Helped Win the Cold War (ISBN: 978-0-7434-2853-8) by Antonio and Jonna Mendez with Bruce Henderson, spy dust itself plays a rather minor role.  The two authors and their craft, disguises, get the majority of the attention.  The story follows both authors in their CIA careers a few years before they came to know about spy dust through an operation that saw them defeat the theretofore undefeated powder.  Antonio was a master of disguise with years and years of experience; Jonna more of an extremely talented up-and-coming star in the CIA.  The book focuses on their teamwork to exfiltrate someone they claim was a well-connected and high-placed Soviet spying for the U.S.  The operation included a handful of Americans and the Russian and his family.  They used all their disguise know-how, which includes a lot of things that aren’t so much about disguises, but simply about how one ports oneself and how people are not able to notice every little thing if what one is doing mostly follows the normal routine.  The daring operation defeated the Russians’ spy dust and got everyone out of the country safely.

In general, I enjoyed the book.  I thought the main story as well as a couple of the smaller operations discussed in the build-up to the one that gave the book its title were very interesting.  When they finally got to telling about that final operation, it was actually pretty exciting reading, and I think I whipped through it pretty quickly with great anticipation, even though it’s obvious the book wouldn’t have been written had the operation gone south.  My big complaint with the book was that it was slow in some parts.  This is especially true when it comes to discussions of the romantic relationship between the two authors, who eventually married.  They talk about it having an impact on their work, but that still seemed to me to be a minor detail and not something that needed to take up scores of pages.  Maybe shorter books don’t sell?  I personally thought the big operation in Moscow could’ve handled a little more detail, and with the discussion of the authors’ personal lives left out, the book would’ve really been cool.  It was an interesting look at one small but important piece of the Cold War, but probably could’ve more than just interesting.

This work, including all text, photographs, and other original work, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives 3.0 License and is copyrighted © MMXIV John Pruess.

Assisted: An Autobiography

As a kid, I was pop culture-challenged.  Who am I kidding here?  I still am.  That even extended into the sports world, and when my neighborhood friends and I would get together to play some basketball in our back yard or in a nearby driveway, it usually involved picking a team to be.  If the Jazz weren’t available by the time it was my turn to play, I was at a loss.  The Jazz were, to a certain extent, the limit of my knowledge of the NBA when I was a really young kid.  As I got older, though, they continued to be the true focus of my knowledge of the NBA.  I just wasn’t (and am not) interested in other teams, nor do I have the time to get into other teams or players.  I care about the Utah Jazz.  It was easy to become a Jazz fan with guys like Karl Malone, John Stockton, and Mark Eaton on the team.  They were all blue-collar guys, and it showed in the way they played.  I never wavered in my love for the Jazz, but I don’t hesitate at all to say that it has dropped off since Stockton and Malone are no longer playing.  They were special.  Stockton was also alluring as a role model, both on and off the court.  He was intensely private, but I always felt that he was not really hiding anything, and the even-keeled guy that “never dogged a play in [his] life” was the same guy we would see were we to see him off the court.

Assisted: An Autobiography (ISBN: 978-1-60907-570-5) by John Stockton, if nothing else, proved me right in my assumption.  Memoir might be a better description of the book, but those arguments about semantics take nothing away from a rather thorough look at Stockton’s life as a little kid roaming the neighborhood with his friends on long summer days to his time as an NBA star and through his post-retirement activities.  He told about his upbringing, his childhood, his high school days, his experiences in college, including various summer jobs, basketball, and dating.  He talked about making it in the NBA, being a rookie, changes in the game, some of former Jazz owner Larry Miller’s quirks, and a host of other things that fans and disinterested parties alike might find interesting.  He talked about his family, and his parents and wife in particular.  He discussed a couple of his coaches, including Jerry Sloan, an NBA great and another hard-nosed, down-to-earth, blue-collar guy.  Stockton’s discussion of the Olympics was fascinating because he was very open about his love for his country and the great responsibility he felt putting U.S.A. on his chest.  He discussed his life after basketball, except that it hasn’t really been life after basketball as some of his kids of played at a very high level, he’s restored a warehouse and turned it into a community sports center, and he’s still involved in the occasional pickup game.  Finally, as part of the proving my assumptions true, his tale is woven throughout with references to family, God, prayer, hard work, and other old-fashioned values.

I wanted to read this book the moment I saw it existed.  Everyone knew John Stockton the leading assist man in the history of the world, but many felt they did’t know John Stockton the person.  Like I said, I figured he was kind of a what-you-see-is-what-you-get kind of person, but I was intrigued to read nevertheless.  The book was a draft of fresh air with each turn of a page.  Stockton comes across as down-to-earth, brutally honest about some of the mistakes he’s made and shortcomings he’s got, and, in a way, an everyday guy that other everyday guys can identify with.  Former Jazz coach Frank Layden, in a statement to the press when the Jazz drafted the unknown John Stockton, explained that he was Catholic and his dad owned a bar, so there really shouldn’t be any questions about him.  Stockton didn’t think that would go over in Utah, largely Mormon and largely dry.  I think he might’ve missed the point about those two characteristics equating to a person that was a good guy and that knew about old-fashioned work ethic.  Stockton proved to be that guy and probably more.  In a world fraught with vice like the NBA, Stockton was different and stepped up to the plate when it came to responsibility of being a role model that is inherent to the position.  His thoughts on other issues, like abortion and family, were also very refreshing coming from a public figure.  The book was well worth the time spend reading it and only solidified my respect for the greatest point guard ever to play the game.

This work, including all text, photographs, and other original work, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives 3.0 License and is copyrighted © MMXIV John Pruess.

My Name Used to Be Muhammad

“I never thought I’d cry when my father died, but I wept like a baby.  I miss him terribly. What I really miss is what we never had.  I would have spent another fifteen years in prison in exchange for the opportunity to be close to my father as a boy. I so badly wanted to please him.  I wanted to hear his praise.  I wanted to kick a soccer ball with him. I wanted to paint him a picture and have him tell me he liked it.  I wanted to tell him I met a girl and fell in love.  I wanted to ask him for advice. I wanted to talk to him about something other than religion.  I wanted him to say something to make me laugh.  I wanted him to put his hand on my shoulder and tell me about a time when he made a mistake as a boy.  I wanted to see him miss my mother. I wanted to be his boy.   Most of all, I wanted him to want me.”
— Tito Momen
One of the most fascinating classes I took in college was a comparative religion class.  This was arguably my introduction to Islam.  I had run into some Muslims while on my mission in Russia, but my understanding of their religion was superficial at best.  It was in my world religions (I think that was its actual name) class that I learned more about the religion that claims more adherents than any other on our planet.  Since then, my travels as well as the events that have often taken center stage in the news have increased my knowledge of this fascinating religion.  As a staunch member of my own church, I find conversion stories to be miraculous, inspiring, and simply interesting.  Islam is known — rightly or wrongly is up for debate — for being extremely harsh in dealing with those who turn against it.  Conversions from the strong traditions of Islam to the all-encompassing doctrines of Mormonism are especially interesting from this standpoint.

Tito Momen, in My Name Used to Be Muhammad (ISBN: 978-1-60907-710-5), told just such a story.  His background was one of utmost Islamic piety in northern Nigeria to accepting Jesus Christ as his Savior and embracing the other doctrines and scriptures of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  The journey was an interesting one, often wrought with peril.  Momen’s childhood and teenage years were fairly typical for boys in the area where his family lived.  His father was extremely strict, occasionally abusive, and based everything he did on his religion.  His plan for young Momen involved formal schooling with the ultimate goal of becoming part of the Islamic clergy.  Momen wasn’t entirely opposed to the idea, wishing to please his father and rather enjoying his schooling.  The only thing he didn’t really get was the lack of an outlet for his natural talents and the lack of room in his culture for questioning those in authority.  At a college in Damascus, Syria, he tired of abusive, extremist professors, eventually getting in a physical altercation with one that he despised the most.  While having the potential to be a real disaster, it ended up putting him on a path toward his eventual conversion.  He was able to go to Cairo, Egypt, to continue his schooling.  There, he met a very diverse group of people, including within the faithful Muslim community.  He learned that the northern Nigerian brand of Islam wasn’t the only one, and that many of those people were still good, faithful members of the faith.  He also ran into those who weren’t.  This diverse crowd led him to think a lot about his faith, and while he admits to making some choices that were not becoming of him, his upbringing, or really anyone, the process of change was something very foreign to someone coming from a background of total, blind obedience.  Eventually, he was kicked out of school in Egypt, too, having written an essay questioning Islam.  A French friend had converted to Mormonism in the meantime and introduced Momen to the Church.  After his conversion was complete, there were troubles with some of his former friends and acquaintances who were considering violence as an option for dealing with the apostasy from Islam.  An attempt to leave Egypt on a fake passport landed him in prison, where he languished for fifteen years before miraculously being let out.  Like the conversion story, the story of Tito Momen getting out of prison showed that God loves us, cares about us, and is involved in the details of our lives.

The book was, as I expected, incredibly interesting.  I know relatively little about the part of the world in which these events were set, so learning about them was neat.  Momen’s conversion story was, of course, incredible and displayed an incredible about of faith and humility.  His is one of those stories that makes a person think something like, “If this guy could go through all that he did, of course I can get through my middling problems.”  It’s an inspiring story that held my attention throughout the book.  The only thing I think could’ve been improved on was that his life story was told in decent detail, but maybe there could’ve been a little more detail given to his conversion to Mormonism.  I realize that it’s a deeply personal thing and that the impressions, thoughts, and feelings we have as we seek answers to our earnest prayers are personal and hard to describe.  Still, they are real, and there are events and thoughts associated with them that would be of interest.  It would firmly be rated PG-13 were it a movie, but it all accurately depicts life in North Africa and the Middle East.  I’d recommend the book as one of general human interest and religious interest that I really enjoyed.

This work, including all text, photographs, and other original work, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives 3.0 License and is copyrighted © MMXIV John Pruess.