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In 1966, the Peace Corps and Tanzania, both newly established, faced a major international crisis when a Peace Corp volunteer was to be tried in Tanzania on a charge of murdering his wife, also a volunteer. This book examines how each of these entities arrived at this juncture—that is, the founding of the Peace Corps and the path to independence for Tanzania, the trial and its aftermath. Two assessors acted as jury, one a white American working in Tanzania, the other a black Tanzanian who had recently returned from graduate studies in the United States and who had been part of the famous African Airlift that brought Africans to America, including Barack Obama’s father, to study. That program, designed to undercut Russian efforts to lure Africans to the Soviet Union, foreshadowed many of the Cold War conflicts between the United States and Tanzania, including the U.S. role in the Congo, the Vietnam War, and apartheid in South Africa. The book explores how government officials, both American and Tanzanian, private attorneys, friends and relatives of the couple, and witnesses dealt with the complex situation.

Liberty Brought Us Here: The True Story of American Slaves Who Migrated to Liberia is a narrative nonfiction book that tells the compelling story of four adults and twelve children from southwestern Kentucky who, after being freed from slavery, migrated to Liberia. It is also the tale of Ben Major, the white man who freed them. The Majors and their former neighbors, the Harlans, were sixteen of the 16,000 black people who left the United States under the auspices of the American Colonization Society. It was the largest out-migration in the country’s history. The emigrants were of African ancestry, but they were not Africans, and were unprepared for the deprivation, disease, and disasters that awaited them. Unlike many former slave owners, Ben stayed in touch with the people he had freed. He sent them much-needed items, such as seeds, tools, books, medicine, and other supplies to help them survive and flourish. In return, they sent coffee, peanuts, and other items to Ben. Liberty Brought Us Here explores this unusual relationship between former slaves and their former owner in the context of the debate over slavery, the controversial colonization movement, and the establishment of the Republic of Liberia.

Bucking the current trend of explaining revolutions via impersonal forces, this book argues that without revolutionary personalities revolutions would not occur. The great revolutionaries of the past two centuries have arrived in pairs. Though each pair differed in how they met, bonded, and diverged, they were similar in having an alpha partner, who recognized his need for the other and never seriously contemplated a separation. This book, in comparing the revolutionary careers of the five pairs also offers a cross-cultural analysis of revolutions, and, by focusing on the personal dimensions of the revolutionary process, puts meat on the bones of the current approach.