When Powers, fresh out of a Ph.D. program in international
relations, arrived in Liberia in 1999, sent by an
international aid agency “to fight poverty and save the
rainforest,” he faced a daunting task. The second-poorest
country in the world, Liberia had just begun to emerge from
seven years of civil war and was “environmentally looted,
violence scarred, and barely governed.” Even major cities
lacked electricity, running water and postal service; garbage
lay uncollected in the streets, schoolteachers were barely
literate and the economy worked largely on bribes. The
government of Charles Taylor enriched itself through illicit
trade in conflict diamonds, protected timber and weapons,
while terrorist militias acted at whim.” It’s all just so
brutal,” Powers confided to his girlfriend, almost ready to
quit after his first year. Yet he stayed on, and this eloquent
memoir shows why he found this troubled country so difficult
to leave.
—Publishers Weekly, starred review