Where Soldiers Fear To Tread

“There is going to be a shooting here and it is a toss-up who is going to get the boy’s first round. The soldier, about ten years old, is jamming the barrel of his gun hard against my driver’s face, and unless the kid decides to go for me, the relief worker, my driver is going to get his head blown off.” WHERE SOLDIERS FEAR TO TREAD John Burnett survived this ordeal and others during his service as a relief worker in Somalia. But many did not. In this gripping firsthand account, Burnett shares his experiences during the flood relief operations of 1997 to 1998. Ravaged by monsoons, starvation, and feuding warlords, Somalia continues to be one of the most dangerous places on earth. Both a personal story and a broader tale of war, the politics of aid, and the horrifying reality of child-soldiers, his chronicle represents the astonishing challenges faced by humanitarian workers across the globe. There are currently thousands of civilian workers serving in over one hundred nations. Today, they are as likely to be killed in the line of duty as are trained soldiers. In the past five years alone, more UN aid workers have been killed than peacekeepers. When Burnett joined the World Food Program, he was told their mission would be safe, their help welcomed–and they would be pulled out if bullets started to fly. When he arrived in Somalia, Burnett found a nation rent by a decade of anarchy, a people wary of foreign intervention, and a discomfiting uncertainty that the UN would remember he’d been sent there at all. From Burnett’s young Somali driver to the armed civilians, warlords, and colleagues he would never see again, this unforgettable memoir delves into the complexity of humanitarian missions and the wonder of everyday people who risk their lives to help others in places too dangerous to send soldiers. “Where Soldiers Fear to Tread is a rousing adventure story and a troubling morality tale....If you’ve ever sent 20 bucks off to a relief organization, you owe it to yourself to read this book.”--Michael Maren, author of The Road to Hell: The Ravaging Effects of Foreign Aid and International Charity

In 1998, bored and rather broke, John Burnett heard that the World Food Programme were looking for small-boat handlers to help deliver aid to the flood-stricken and starving people of Somalia and that the money was good. On the lookout for adventure and willing to take a risk, Burnett was nevertheless completely unprepared for the realities of working in a country without government or law where the only authority that matters came from a loaded gun - and where hippos, crocodiles and green mambas offered alternative means of violent death. From his lack of proper tools and communication gear to the mad unsuitability of his water-ski boat for delivering aid supplies up a flooded river to the tragedy of watching a baby die of malaria in his arms and the gut-wrenching fear of being held up at gunpoint by a child soldier, the experience of being an aid-worker drastically changed the way he sees the world.

The provocative autobiography of the Native American activist, leader of the takeover of Wounded Knee in 1973, recounts his struggle for Indian self-determination, his periods in prison, and his spiritual awakening. National ad/promo. Tour.

"Let her go to Italy!" he cried. "Let her meddle with what she doesn't understand! Look at this letter! The man who wrote it will marry her, or murder her, or do for her somehow. He's a bounder, but he's not an English bounder. He's mysterious and terrible. He's got a country behind him that's upset people from the beginning of the world." When a young English widow takes off on the grand tour and along the way marries a penniless Italian, her in-laws are not amused. That the marriage should fail and poor Lilia die tragically are only to be expected. But that Lilia should have had a baby -- and that the baby should be raised as an Italian! -- are matters requiring immediate correction by Philip Herriton, his dour sister Harriet, and their well-meaning friend Miss Abbott. In his first novel, E. M. Forster anticipated the themes of cultural collision and the sterility of the English middle class that he would develop in A Room with a View and A Passage to India. Where Angels Fear to Tread is an accomplished, harrowing, and malevolently funny book, in which familiar notions of vice and virtue collapse underfoot and the best intentions go mortally awry.