Autobiography – Page 5 – education and deconstruction.com

Flying Close to the Sun

The Book of the Week is “Flying Close to the Sun” by Cathy Wilkerson, published in 2007.

Born in January 1945 in Hartsdale, a northern suburb of New York City, the author spent most of her childhood in Connecticut. At a young age, she was drawn to politics. At Swarthmore College, she joined the group, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), and engaged in political activism for decades. Many young people were brainwashed into thinking that the revolutions in China, Vietnam and Cuba had been successful in creating a societal paradise.

In turbulent 1960’s America, the counter-cultural attitude was:

“If corporations were stealing from us and selling us products that killed, then we too could steal from them and support the movement.”

As is well known, during the Vietnam War, more than a few American companies were cooperating with the U.S. government to supply the U.S. military with napalm and agent orange, two chemicals toxic to vegetation as well as humans.

In June 1969, SDS held a convention for its chapters across the country. However, there was lots of infighting over ideology and the direction of the movement. Later that month, a few SDS members wrote a paper that said that the United States government should be overthrown because it was imperialist, and oppressed blacks and the poor. The plan was that the revolutionaries would impose Marxist-Leninist socialism so that Americans in the new world order could live happily ever after.

The paper inspired some SDS members, including Wilkerson, to form a new group which called itself the Weatherman. She began to think that the only way to change the world was through revolution. Weatherman started to provoke the local Chicago police the way the Black Panthers had been doing. The former became very focused on the Black Power movement, at the expense of the women’s movement.

Wilkerson gave talks that advocated working with women of all ages around issues of domestic violence and workplace harassment. She was bullied at a self-criticism meeting about not being more against racism. She was told she was being selfish; that blacks were being treated worse than women. SDS leaders said that’s why blacks deserved more attention. The group should focus on the blacks and when they achieved equality, then women’s equality would follow.

In summer 1969 in Columbus, Ohio, two dozen SDSers recruited high schoolers in their hangouts such as streets, beaches, bars, etc. In three not-so-great neighborhoods, they incited blacks to riot and commit violence against the police. Unsurprisingly, the mayor called in the National Guard.

That same summer, SDS member Mike Klonsky resigned. He had realized that violence was a childish way to resolve conflicts, and suggested that instead, people work through their anger about injustice by pressuring politicians to combat racism, and raise awareness in workplaces.

The late 1960’s and early 1970’s saw incidents of unrest that scarred the American psyche; the most well-publicized included: Columbia University in spring 1968, the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August 1968, San Francisco State College beginning in late 1968, and Kent State in Ohio in May 1970. Wilkerson and others in the “movement” thought that these incidents indicated that activists were catching on and making progress.

As a low-level member of Weatherman, Wilkerson lived in the collective, and did what they did. She learned martial arts, exercised, and discussed and argued for hours about the agenda of the organization. The collective voted to do away with monogamy, as that would allow full participation of all members. The group wanted to have a collective sense of humanity– it was bigger than oneself.

Read the book to learn of a game-changing event that occurred in March 1970 involving Wilkerson, that radically changed her group’s and her circumstances, and of much more about her life and times.

Quiet Strength – BONUS POST

The Bonus Book of the Week is “Quiet Strength, The Principles, Practices, & Priorities of A Winning Life” by Tony Dungy with Nathan Whitaker, published in 2007.

Born in 1954, Dungy grew up to become a professional football coach. In 1999, at an after-game press conference, he expressed his displeasure with the referees’ rulings and instant replays. He was fined by the then-NFL commissioner ten thousand dollars.

About four years later, and again, about six years later– an instant replay helped Dungy’s team win in the last play of the game. The way the former win occurred was unprecedented in that the team scored three touchdowns in the last four minutes of an away game on Monday night, against the latest Super Bowl winners, in his original hometown. On his birthday.

Dungy thought God had something to do with that. Read the book to learn much more about his religious bent, philosophy, and the different roles he played in his life, in addition to that of coach.

Tough Love – BONUS POST

The Bonus Book of the Week is “Tough Love, My Story of the Things Worth Fighting For” by Susan Rice, published in 2019.

Rice– of Jamaican ancestry on her mother’s side, and African American on her father’s side– spent her childhood in Washington, D.C. She was a key player in foreign policy during the presidential administrations of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.

In economics and foreign policy, president Ronald Reagan truly led a “Revolution” that has lasted forty years. American political, economic, and even cultural hegemony began to be taken for granted. The way his administration papered over the downsides of the United States’ military intervention in the world’s hotspots (except for Lebanon), made “might makes right” acceptable again, less than a decade (!) after Vietnam.

Rice (post-Obama) had an awakening similar to that of Jeanne Kirkpatrick (post-Reagan) when she naively wrote, “At the time, the notion we could send U.S. forces to a faraway land to save innocent lives only to have our lives taken away was infuriating and bewildering.”

Yet Rice sometimes favored sending in troops (through the UN) during the many instances of bloody unrest (some genocidal) that reared their ugly heads on various continents in the 1990’s into the 2000’s. She put in her two cents in heated, emotionally stressful debates over civil wars in Somalia, Rwanda, Libya (which eventually became a quagmire– unsurprisingly), Syria, etc.

Often, the alleged initial mission of NATO was to stem the proliferation of deaths of civilians. But in the long run– even with all kinds of assistance (military, political, humanitarian) from democratic countries– civilians in the Third World cannot break their homeland’s vicious dictatorship cycle (See this blog’s entire category “Third-World-Country-Victims of War and/or Dictator”).

Another set of repeated epic fails through the decades (as recently as the 2010’s) has been the United States’ attempts at “Vietnamization.” During 2012, Rice and other high-level officials wrung their hands regarding Syria. Rice wrote, “President Obama decided in 2013 to join our Sunni Arab and Turkish partners in arming and later training vetted Syrian rebels who were fighting Assad [Syria’s leader]. Some were terrorists.”

A simple reason for the failure of “Vietnamization” is that the people are being given fish (short-term handouts) with too much emphasis on military operations. This quick fix is provided by short-sighted politicians who have their eye on reelection or political expedience. The alternative is teaching the people how to fish (a system of democracy that jives with their culture), which is expensive, and takes years or decades, and might not be worth doing, pursuant to the strategic interests of the “liberators.” Installing democracy is like installing new software– it’s initially problematic, and it will require frequent patches and updates, and occasionally third-level tech support, indefinitely.

Read the book to learn of the smear campaigns launched against Rice (including that led by Lindsey Graham after Benghazi), how she built her career and what she did, the different mentalities of the UN and U.S. government agencies that handled foreign policy, the different personalities of all kinds of people whom Rice encountered in her lifetime, and almost everything you ever wanted to know about her life.

Tom Landry

The Book of the Week is “Tom Landry, An Autobiography” by Tom Landry with Gregg Lewis, published in 1990.

Landry was born in September 1924 in the small town of Mission, Texas. He enjoyed a boyhood typical for his time and place– bicycle riding, fishing in the Rio Grande, and watching movies at the local theater every Saturday afternoon. Every Saturday night, Methodist and Baptist families mingled at a block party in the neighborhood. Kids in those days organized themselves in their own pick-up football games at the local sandlot.

Although Landry received a full scholarship from the University of Texas, beginning in 1944, he flew thirty missions for the Army Air Corps in the war. When he returned to school in 1947, he played the position of fullback, but suffered various injuries. By the time he graduated in 1949, he had become a rusher, and gotten signed by the football Yankees of the All-American Football Conference. Some of his fellow players were already in their mid-thirties, after having completed their military service and educations.

In 1954, Landry’s leadership talent was recognized. He served as an assistant coach, punter and played defense for the New York Giants football team in the NFL. At that time, they played in Yankee Stadium. On the day of the Championship game in December 1956, the field was frozen. The Giants’ management provided the team with basketball sneakers so they wouldn’t slip and slide on the ice.

Landry remarked that his and Vince Lombardi’s coaching styles were both successful, although they were starkly different. Lombardi’s team, the Green Bay Packers, played well because if they didn’t, they would receive the coach’s wrath. They emotionally bonded like soldiers (whom they had been) so that they wanted to win for their teammates more than themselves. Landry didn’t make his players fear him, but armed them with knowledge and confidence.

In their generations, Landry and Lombardi experienced an extremely serious: financial crisis, and war. These forced them to adopt a team-oriented mentality in order to survive. Their children’s and grandchildren’s generations– who came of age in the 1960’s– prompted a tumultuous shift in American culture that resulted in the recognition of the value of the individual. Unfortunately, that mindset has been taken to the extreme with the current younger generation. The technology of the Internet allows everyone on earth to express themselves with few filters– making for a very cluttered global communications environment.

Landry opined that Lombardi gave the impression that he was hellbent on winning, but– he still cared about people. These days, the kinds of people who garner the most attention on social media tend to be sociopathic (of course there are exceptions). Landry characterized them thusly: “If winning is the only thing that matters… You’d cheat. You’d sacrifice your marriage or your family to win. Relationships wouldn’t matter.” The god-fearing Methodist Landry believed that his religion led people to behave better, but now he’d roll over in his grave.

Anyway, the summer of 1960 saw Landry talent-spotting and recruiting 193 potential members of the Dallas Cowboys– an expansion team that was later drastically winnowed down to a few tens of players at their training camp in Oregon. In their first season, the Cowboys tied the Giants in the second-to-last game, else they would have lost all of their then-twelve games. Nonetheless, the Cowboys’ owner knew that nurturing a winning football team takes time, and had faith in Landry’s abilities as a coach. In 1964, he awarded Landry a ten-year contract as head coach. Landry took that as a religious sign that coaching a professional football team was what he should continue to do with his life.

Landry contracted with IBM to use a computer program to analyze potential players’ talents in the NFL draft in order to reap the cream of the crop for his Cowboys. After the 1963 season and thereafter, he reviewed films of his existing players in actual games to identify their strengths and weaknesses. In 1965, he hired an industrial psychologist, who helped his players set team and individual goals. Preparing Lambeau Field in Green Bay for the 1967 season, Lombardi installed an underground heating system, which cost $80,000. On playoff day, December 31, the temperature hovered around negative 16 degrees Fahrenheit.

Read the book to learn about the Cowboys’ star quarterback of the 1970’s, the team’s amazing comebacks, and much more about Landry’s trials, tribulations and triumphs in coaching and in life.

A Long Way From Home – BONUS POST

The Bonus Book of the Week is “A Long Way From Home, Growing Up In the American Heartland” by Tom Brokaw, published in 2002.

Born in February 1940 in Webster South Dakota, Brokaw wrote of his first 22 years. He described the 1940’s and 1950’s Missouri-River infrastructure projects, among others, of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, whom his father assisted. Previously, all kinds of fish could be caught in the river.

Particularly noteworthy was the literal and figurative power the U.S. president possessed upon the 1953 completion of the flow-altering, water-corralling, energy-generating achievement: “President Eisenhower flipped a switch in the Oval Office to activate the eight turbines that, when powered by the focused force of the water, would transmit electricity to seven states.”

Additional curious information that represented the tenor of the times included the 1950’s South Dakota test of manhood handed down from father to son: pheasant hunting in wetlands, tall prairie grass, sorghum and cornfields.

Read the book to learn about many other cultural aspects of Brokaw’s childhood; a bygone era.

Daughter of Destiny / Getting Away With Murder

The first Book of the Week is “Daughter of Destiny, An Autobiography” by Benazir Bhutto, published in 1989.

“If you do not appoint me president along with my team, then I’m afraid I’ll have to explore other options. I may even have to start my own party. I will be your biggest opposition.”

-said to Benazir in late 1984 by one of the Old Guard PPP members in exile in London

Upon the initial sovereignty of Pakistan in 1947, there was an egalitarian climate in terms of gender– women could join the country’s National Guard. Born the oldest of four siblings in June 1953 in Karachi, Benazir Bhutto began studying at Radcliffe College (the sister school to Harvard) in 1969. There, she made many friends who achieved high positions in the world, affording her political assistance through the years.

The Bhuttos were something akin to a royal family in Pakistan in the second half of the twentieth century. They were one of the largest tribes in Sindh. They were Muslim, and most of their members lived in Larkana where they had plantations of rice, sugar cane, cotton and guava. Females inherited land when their relatives died, but their marriages were arranged.

Benazir’s grandfather was progressive in permitting his female descendants to get an education. Ironically, many families didn’t educate their sons because the sons were almost guaranteed a living from supervising servants who worked the land.

Benazir’s father– Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, a Sunni, studied abroad at the University of California at Berkeley, and then Oxford University’s law school in England. Benazir’s mother, a Shiite, was: a second-generation Iranian, allowed to forgo covering herself up with clothing, and allowed to drive a car.

As is well known, through the centuries, there has been almost non-stop tribal and religious warfare in the territory that has become Pakistan. In the 1960’s, the major sites of bloodshed included the Kashmir, the Punjab and Sindh. In 1967, Zulfikar (Benazir’s father), a wildly popular government minister experienced in various political areas, helped form the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP). In 1974, Zulfikar, as a master diplomatic negotiator, participated in talks over the territory that was to become Bangladesh.

In March 1976, Zulfikar was elected president of Pakistan. He nationalized major corporations, re-allocated land to peasants and outlawed gender discrimination in employment and government. Pairs of groups engaged in constant conflict: separatists in certain regions of Pakistan fought with those who believed the people would be better served by a federal government; rich opposed poor; landowners tangled with the educated, etc. Surprisingly, most of Pakistan’s population was still illiterate.

In the first half of the 1970’s, Zulfikar and his ilk continued to anger the United States with their actions. The leader spoke out against the Vietnam War, made friendly overtures to China, and took the Arab side in the Yom Kippur War.

Beginning around the middle of 1976, the French were teaching the Pakistanis how to make nuclear weapons. The latter were having a little spat with India besides. So the following year, the newly elected president Jimmy Carter secretly sicced the CIA on Zulfikar. It collaborated with the PPP’s rival party, the PNA (comprised of thugs, arsonists and sociopathic sadists with weaponry) to commit black-market currency manipulation to lower the value of the American dollar. Predictably, there were ugly consequences.

Carter and Ronald Reagan after him, like all American presidents, had to decide the kinds and amounts of aid to give to, or withhold from nations such as Pakistan, with its human rights abuses and temptation from the Soviets to adopt Communist policies in exchange for financial aid and weaponry.

As is well known, Pakistan borders on Afghanistan, in which the Soviets militarily insinuated themselves in late 1979. There were complicated economic, trade and geopolitical considerations– including a huge number of Afghan refugees– which as usual, were favored over stemming abusive treatment of ordinary Pakistanis by their government.

In July 1977, Zia ul-Haq, a general, had finally gained sufficient sway over Pakistan’s military to arrest and jail Zulfikar. Zia canceled the elections and declared Martial Law when he saw that there was still huge support among common Pakistanis for the Party (PPP). In October 1979, the Bhutto family’s newspaper was shuttered. The remaining media outlets of course, were censored by dictator Zia. Political parties were outlawed.

Dissidents, including Benazir and her mother (who, for some years stayed and fought, and other years, fled the country until there was less danger of assassination) were subjected to the usual Third-World-country human-rights abuses.

There was the vicious cycle of arrests on false charges, jailings with horrible conditions, arbitrary releases and re-arrests on different, absurd charges; firing on protesters– killing hundreds or thousands (accurate documentation was hard to come by, as foreign journalists were censored or banned from the country during the worst years of the oppression). For, the government controlled the courts, the army, and the media.

By the 1980’s, Pakistan was making a transition from military dictatorship to theocracy, as Zia supported the Wahhabis. However, on and off through the years, Zia must have still cared about world opinion because international complaints prompted him to, among making other concessions, allow Benazir and her mother at different times to be released from jail to receive
treatment abroad for serious medical conditions.

Anne Fadiman, a writer for Life magazine recounted an interesting experience riding in a car with Benazir going to a political rally in August 1986. Benazir stood on the seat with her head through the open sunroof (or emergency exit) when police officers started spraying tear gas. Incidentally, that tear gas was made in America, by Smith & Wesson.

Read the book to learn a wealth of additional details on Pakistan’s political history from the 1970’s up until the book’s writing as seen through Benazir’s eyes and personal experiences (Hint– it involved the usual, repetitive dictatorial shenanigans), and how she portrayed herself as the new Mahatma Gandhi toward the end of the story, in the spring of 1986, amid riots in Karachi over identity politics, and identity cards for voting).

The second Book of the Week is “Getting Away With Murder, Benazir Bhutto’s Assassination and the Politics of Pakistan” by Heraldo Munoz, published in 2014.

The author wrote, “The commission soon encountered a country deeply skeptical of authority and the justice system because of widespread corruption , abundant behind-the-scenes political deal making, and the regular impunity that had met previous unsolved political assassinations [which included Benazir Bhutto’s brother; her father’s was a death sentence but an assassination nevertheless].”

From its founding in 1947 through the first decade of the twenty-first century, Pakistan has had a European-style / military / theocratic government, each of which has waxed and waned with the vicissitudes of geopolitical shenanigans.

In mid-2004, the United States persuaded Pakistan’s leader Pervez Musharraf (who was turning into a dictator) to plan to give up his generalship in the Pakistani military and exile himself at some future date at U.S. taxpayer expense (because he knew the tide was turning against him), rather than the alternative. Benazir was considering returning to Pakistan to run for the top leadership position in an election, when Musharraf’s latest term was supposedly going to expire.

Talks also dragged on for three years between Musharraf and Benazir over a proposed power-sharing arrangement. Always a bad idea. For, a co-prime-ministership would certainly have failed. In the vast majority of cases, with a more-or-less democratic government, there can be only one leader.

Two very different people such as they, unrelated by marriage or blood are highly unlikely to have enough common vision, complementary talents and skills, and strategic interests to cooperate enough of the time to make it work.

Elections to governing bodies and top leaders in Pakistan were scheduled for January 2008. Benazir Bhutto had, in the past, been at various times– top leader, party leader, jailed, in exile, and physically present– mentored by her father who led Pakistan before her in the 1970’s.

Conspiracy theories abounded surrounding the circumstances of Benazir’s December 2007 assassination in Rawalpindi. A few bullets allegedly penetrated her head (or not– she allegedly bumped her head on the lever controlling the sunroof / emergency exit of the vehicle in which she was standing up with her head exposed to rally-supporters / protesters / political enemies), plus a suicide bomber’s explosives detonated near her vehicle that might have contributed to her death.

However, the fact that she was killed should have come as no surprise. She knew she was at risk for harm, considering that all political leaders are surrounded by security at all times, even those from democratic countries. Ones from Third World countries like Benazir, are especially vulnerable to physical danger from political rivals.

Just one day prior, terror attacks against her supporters in the form of two explosions in Karachi left hundreds wounded and dead. The then-leader of Pakistan’s military dictatorship who had grabbed power in a 1999 coup– the aforementioned Musharraf– refused to allow the FBI or Scotland Yard to investigate, not wanting to appear to be a puppet of the West (though he so obviously was).

A year and half later (!!) (rather than the next day), in February 2009, the United Nations (UN) began an inquiry into Benazir’s death. It wasn’t meant to result in any trial or punishment, but was simply a way for the investigators to remain relevant, and counter the Pakistan government’s historical revisionism with their own.

The author was named to the UN Commission of Inquiry, which traveled three times to Pakistan. Read the book to learn much more about the history of Pakistan and his experiences in trying to get the facts on the events that led to Benazir’s death.

The Generous Years – BONUS POST

The Bonus Book of the Week is “The Generous Years, Remembrances of a Frontier Boyhood” by Chet Huntley, published in 1968.

Born in March 1911, the author grew up in Montana. When he was about two years old, his immediate family took advantage of the Homestead Act, claiming 320 acres of ranch and farm land in northern Montana. Extended family members acquired hundreds of additional acres. His mother’s father was particularly helpful in beginning to make the land livable and workable. The author detailed the extensive hard manual labor required for doing so.

They had to dig a well, construct various buildings on the site as residences for people and animals, for storage; not to mention outhouses. They had to purchase and maintain farm machinery (primitive at the time, of course), and install fences. The author learned how to approach and care for farm animals without getting injured. Regardless of the author’s grandfather’s accumulation of life experiences that warded off reasonably preventable problems, there still occurred all kinds of disasters beyond the family’s control.

One year, in less than ten minutes, a hailstorm ruined the flax crop. Other years, devastation was wrought by: locusts, rust spores, tumbleweed of thistle, fires resulting from a lightning storm and other causes, blizzards, drought, etc., etc., etc. The author described the tenor of the times– one of virtue and cooperation among the members (not just his relatives) of his community. “There were bills to be paid in town. They must be settled; that was a point of honor and conscience.”

Due to financial struggle, the author’s father was forced to return to his previous career as a railroad telegrapher, which required the family to move around Montana every few months or years. The author began his formal education in a one-room schoolhouse, with about a dozen other kids (which eventually included his three younger sisters) in grades one through eight, and one teacher.

Read the book to learn how the author’s education of the outside world accelerated when his family moved to urban areas such as Saco and Butte (hint: he and his high school friends were treated almost like adults in the gambling halls, speakeasies, bordellos and elsewhere), and many more aspects of the kinder, simpler America of his generation.

The Year I Was Peter the Great – BONUS POST

The Bonus Book of the Week is “The Year I was Peter the Great, 1956–Khrushchev, Stalin’s Ghost, and A Young American in Russia” by Marvin Kalb, published in 2017.

Born in 1930 in the Bronx, the nerdy author tutored Puerto Rican students for free at his high school, and in exchange, they became his bodyguards against the Irish kids who tried to bully him. The author attended City College and covered sports for its college newspaper. In the early 1950’s, a sting operation caught 32 basketball players from seven colleges across the country in a point-shaving (sports-betting) scandal.

Passionate about all things Soviet, after a two-year stint in the U.S. Army, the author was afforded the opportunity to do post-graduate, independent study in Moscow in 1956. He also became a translator of news articles for the American embassy there.

In February 1956, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, through delivering a famous speech, signaled that the political times were changing in the Soviet Union. The indoctrination of people born under the rule of his predecessor Josef Stalin, could be described thusly: “For much of their lives, they had been moored to rigid Communist dogma, trained to worship Stalin’s genius, dedicated to the Soviet system.”

At the time, the author was hopeful that Khrushchev’s speech was going to be ground-breaking, and reported to the American embassy, his personal observations of students’ rebellious behavior in Lenin Library and Historical Library. Unfortunately, it took about thirty-five (!) more years of the inhumane political system of pure Communism to collapse in a large portion of the world.

Read the book to learn much more about the author’s experiences during, and reminiscences of, a very exciting year in his life.

Madam Secretary – BONUS POST

“… the United States lost interest in the region, leaving behind thousands of militant people with few jobs but many guns.”
No, not North America.

1990’s Afghanistan, according to Madeleine Albright. And as is well known, plenty of other decades and places.

The Bonus Book of the Week is “Madam Secretary, A Memoir” by Madeleine Albright with Bill Woodward, published in 2003.

Albright was born in May 1937. She and her parents fled their native Czechoslovakia for England the following year. They moved back after the war. In early 1948, Communists took over Czechoslovakia, while she was sent to boarding school in Switzerland. Meanwhile, her father, a high-level diplomat, moved to the Czech embassy in South Asia to help resolve the dispute over Kashmir. Her mother, brother and sister made their way to the United States. They were eventually granted political asylum.

Albright married a journalist from an “economic royalist” family with extensive real estate and corporate holdings. “We continued to go to Georgia… Colorado… Virginia, where we added land wherever we could…” She built a high-powered career, beginning as a volunteer for political causes that required frequent global travel in the late 1980’s. “But my American passport made all the difference. I was able to meet with dissidents, then board a plane and leave. I didn’t have to make the choices they [Czech citizens, when they were a Soviet satellite] had to make each day of their lives.”

Albright served as UN ambassador in president Bill Clinton’s first term. She switched to secretary of state in the second term. In spring 1997, there remained numerous nations suffering continuous and continual political crises that arguably necessitated military intervention– despite the end of the Cold War. Albright represented the United States government in talks that resulted in an increase in the number of NATO members from sixteen to nineteen through adding Poland, Czech Republic and Hungary because they were approaching democracy sooner than other political territories.

Albright claimed that economic sanctions imposed by the UN Security Council on Libya actually motivated Libya’s leader Muammar Gaddafi to turn in the two suspects (traced to Libya) for trial, in the terrorist bomb-attack on Pan Am flight 103. However, around the same time, sanctions in the form of a trade embargo, failed to change any of the cronyism and corruption practiced by Fidel Castro of Cuba. Apparently, he wasn’t in a power struggle, and wasn’t afraid that his worldwide reputation would be tarnished by treating his country’s citizens worse than usual.

As for North Korea, in June 2000, president Clinton visited leader Kim Jong il in the capital Pyongyang for a summit meeting that resulted in reunions of South and North Korean families who had been separated for more than fifty years. “North and South Korean athletes marched as one during opening ceremonies of the 2000 Olympic Games…” Ah, the good old days.

Anyway, read the book to learn much more about Albright’s trials, tribulations, and triumphs in trying to achieve world peace. Here is a parody that briefly describes a high-level, foreign-service position.

JOB OF A LIFETIME

sung / spoken to the tune of “Once in a Lifetime” [the long version] with apologies to Talking Heads (Brian Eno, Christopher Frantz, David Byrne, Jerry Harrison, and Tina Weymouth.)

And you may find yourself
living in a luxury hotel.
And you may busy yourself
flying all over the world.

And you may kid yourself
behind the scenes of a large cease-fire agreement.
And you may seat yourself
in a situation room
with a complicated plot.
And you may declare to yourself, well,
There’ll be no nuclear war here!

Trying to do your best
while the media cut you down.
Attending meetings, writing reports
while shenanigans abound.