Bushels and Bales

Poverty and prosperity, fear and fun, mistakes, corruption, incompetence, language and cultural glitches, and developmental successes-the author recounts his government service on six continents in a 34-year career. Take one Pennsylvania-born, university-trained development economist, mix with the people, problems, and opportunities of 43 countries, stir in a variety of U.S. government programs, and you can learn a lot. Howard Steele certainly did, and survived gun-toting Bolivian revolutionaries, Viet Cong mortar and rifle fire, deadly anarchy in Sri Lanka, a shakedown by Tanzanian police, Taiwanese cockroaches the size of kittens, and sheep's eye stew in Saudi Arabia. Marriage survival was more difficult. As Steele advanced from midlevel technician to a senior rank U.S. representative, he at times had to battle his own government and navigate its bureaucracy, just as he did with dozens of overseas regimes and their national cultures. From Brazil, just after its 1964 revolution, to Switzerland in 1995-with assignments in South Vietnam, Guatemala, Bolivia, Honduras, Costa Rica, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Nepal, among numerous others along the way-Steele recounts his service on six continents in a 34-year career. He tells it as it happened, no partisan spin, all authentic, on-the-scene detail. Poverty and prosperity, fear and fun, mistakes, corruption, incompetence, language and cultural glitches, and developmental successes are all here.