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When the World Calls: THE INSIDE STORY OF THE PEACE CORPS AND ITS FIRST FIFTY YEARS
When the World Calls THE INSIDE STORY OF THE PEACE CORPS AND ITS FIRST FIFTY YEARS Author:Stanley Meisler A complete and revealing history of the Peace Corps?in time for its fiftieth anniversary — — Since its inauguration, the Peace Corps has been an American emblem for world peace and friendship. Across the nation, there are 200,000 former volunteers, with alumni including members of Congress and ambassadors, novelists and university preside... more »nts, television commentators and journalists. Yet few Americans realize that through the past nine presidential administrations, the Peace Corps has sometimes tilted its agenda to meet the demands of the White House. Stanley Meisler discloses, for instance, how Lyndon Johnson became furious when volunteers opposed his invasion of the Dominican Republic; he reveals how Richard Nixon literally tried to destroy the Peace Corps, and he shows how Ronald Reagan endeavored to make it an instrument of foreign policy in Central America. But somehow the ethos of the Peace Corps endured.
In the early years, Meisler was deputy director of the Peace Corps? Office of Evaluation and Research?and his unswerving commitment to write an unauthorized and balanced history results in a nuanced portrait of one of our most valued, and complex, institutions.« less