I came across Pico Iyer while reading and reviewing Ronald Wright’s Time Among the Maya, published by ELAND Press, as he wrote the introduction. His overview was insightful and concise, and I learned he’d written over 50 such openings. Initial research revealed that he was a revered travel writer and that he’d written a book about his fascination with one of my favorite writers, Graham Greene. The book is a meditation about Graham, as well as the author. Greene is the virtual man in Iyer’s head, raising the question, what causes a particular writer to resonate in our souls? I’d […]
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Those Who Are Gone: A Novelette, by Lawrence F. Lihosit, Reviewed by Mark D. Walker
Over the years, I’ve read and reviewed several of the eighteen books of fellow author and Returned Peace Corps Volunteer “Lorenzo” Lihosit. He was a volunteer in Honduras and married a lady from Mexico, and I was a volunteer in Guatemala and married a señorita from there. I used his Peace Corps Experience: Write & Publish Your Memoir to write my own, Different Latitudes: My Life in the Peace Corps and Beyond, proofed his Oral History from Madera, California, and agreed with the Madera Tribune, “The best of its kind in print. Like Volume 1, the author offers real-life stories […]
Continue readingSouth to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation, by Imani Perry, Reviewed by Mark D. Walker
This book is one of several I’ve been reading to understand race relations in the U.S. better and make sense of the “Black Lives Matter” movement. I was brought up in Plainfield, New Jersey, where I only saw a few Black American kids in the upper tier of classes that I was in during elementary school. Then we moved out West, and I remember turning on my television to the riots in Newark, New Jersey, which were part of the 150 riots around the country during the “Long hot summer of 1967.” Newscasts showed shattered storefronts, fires caused by arson, […]
Continue readingEntre Dos Mundos: Una Memoria por Victor Montejo, La Revisión por Mark D. Walker
Este libro es una autobiografía de un increíble antropólogo y escritor guatemalteco. Él cuenta la extraordinaria historia de un niño Maya quien busca mejorar su vida a través de la educación. Es una historia de sueños y metas que atraviesa el mundo Maya y el Occidental. Supe del autor por primera vez, hace unos veinte años, al leer su novela, “Las Aventuras de Míster Puttison Entre los Mayas,”. Esta otra novela es histórica y satírica, relatando las aventuras de un viajero norteamericano, que aparece en una aldea Maya aislada y la comunidad piensa que es un cura. La historia es […]
Continue readingMillion Mile Walker Dispatch, Special Book & Movie Reviews!, September, 2022
Dear Friends and Colleagues from Around the World, I’ll report lessons learned after celebrating Banned Book Week in Culture Watch. I have special book and movie recommendations in My Writing, Interviews, and Reviews. I will share some compelling Voices of the Day, some surprising What Others Are Saying, and an updated Calendar. You can click on the poster above for my Arizona Authors Association newsletter section, which highlights several of my latest articles and book reviews. Cultural Watch My daughter Nicky & her librarian hubby, Ed, joined me for the “Band Against the Ban in Arizona” gathering kicked off by our PEN America […]
Continue readingThe Bad Angel Brothers by Paul Theroux, Reviewed by Mark D. Walker
I’ve read and reviewed the last seven books from the “Dean of Travel Writing,” Paul Theroux, and was fortunate enough to obtain one of the early copies of this book. I wrote my latest book, My Saddest Pleasures: 50 Years on the Road, in honor and appreciation of Theroux and another travel writer, “who personally knew and were inspired by Moritz Thomsen and passed their enthusiasm on to me.” Thomsen wrote the Peace Corps experience classic, Living Poor: A Peace Corps Chronicle. Theroux’s book, The Tao of Travel, which celebrates 50 years of travel writing, inspired my series, “The […]
Continue readingDemocrazy, version 2020 by Elizabeth Graham, Reviewed by Mark D. Walker
The author attended a presentation I made at the Arizona Professional Writers Group in August, and I participated in a presentation she made to the same group’s “Book Club” the next month, which offered an excellent opportunity to get acquainted. Her book helped connect the dots between several circumstances around past President Trump many Americans, and I wondered about: The stunning comment he made at the Helsinki Conference where he ignored his own intelligence community’s reports of Russian involvement in our elections because Putin said it was a lie. And then the impact of Trump working with and […]
Continue reading“Perception and Deception: A Mind-Opening Journey Across Cultures” by Joe Lurie, Reviewed by Mark D. Walker
The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend. — Henri Bergson I learned of Joe’s work and book from an interview on the Global TV Talk Show—whose host, Ed Cohen, asked many revealing questions. I learned that Joe and I are contemporaries—he was in Kenya with the Peace Corps when I was in Guatemala, but he took his knowledge of cross-cultural communications to new levels, and we have a more tolerant world as a result—at least among those who have read his book or participated in one of his classes/courses. I contacted Joe through the […]
Continue readingA Indian Among Los Indigenas: A Native Travel Memoir by Ursula Pike, Reviewed by Mark D. Walker
I first became aware of the author when she made a presentation at the Phoenix Writers Network. I had an opportunity to share some similarities in our experiences, since Guatemala and Bolivia have a high percentage of the Indigenous population. I learned that she was from a Native American community, which gave her a perspective most volunteers couldn’t understand or appreciate. Like many volunteers, I was focused on just learning Spanish and surviving, so I wasn’t prepared to learn one of the 22 Mayan languages in Guatemala. When the author revealed that the pages of her copy of Moritz Thomsen’s […]
Continue readingTravelers’ Tales: Central America, Editors Larry Habegger and Natanya Pearlman, Reviewed by Mark D. Walker
Fellow travel writer Tom Miller warned me about the book when he learned I was working on an essay about Central America, The Guatemala Reader, “Mark –Careful! You don’t want to duplicate anything from Travelers’ Tales Central America.” When I reviewed the table of contents, I realized my book would be very different, as I’d be the author of all the stories focused on one country, while in this book, the stories cover Belize, Honduras, El Salvador, Ecuador, Costa Rica, and Panama, as well as Guatemala. Also, all the travel writers like Paul Theroux, Ronald Wright, and Tim Cahill […]
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