A young American diplomat turns against the war when he is assigned to approve bombing targets in Laos.
--This text refers to the
Paperback
edition.
What a man was passionate about at the age of 12 is probably what he should make his life's work. I was chasing frogs and snakes and other small animals in the outdoors, but at the same time I was addicted to reading and wound up making the wrong choice.
I became a reporter, columnist and editor for the old Washington Daily News and for the Washington Post. Following that I free-lanced for the Saturday Evening Post, Sports Illustrated, Holiday, the Nation, Penthouse, Oui, Esquire, and the Readers Digest.
In 1966 I joined the U.S. Information Agency, serving in Casablanca before becoming press attache in our Laos embassy during the war. I resigned over there and went back to free-lance reporting, in Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam.
On returning to the United States in 1972, I wrote two volumes of the Time-Life Books wilderness series. In 1976 I joined the Carter campaign, ending up as a White House speechwriter and later chief of public affairs for the Federal Aviation Administration.
When Reagan fired us all, I wrote my first novel, "The Bombing Officer," and spent five years teaching writing at Harvard. There I began the Tom Bethany mystery series, which I may yet revive.
I recent years I've been blogging at http://badattitudes.com/MT/ on politics, culture, and whatever else catches my interest. And lately, having at last become old enough to figure out what actually matters, I have been running around in the woods again. This is in pursuit of a book on the community of herpetology -- humans and reptiles both -- in the United States.
Ideas, leads, anecdotes, suggestions, and pictures are all welcome and may be sent to my gmail account. To the left of the ampersand, type: jerome.doolittle
