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Peace Corps Volunteer
This is a list of notable persons who have been members of the United States Peace Corps, along with their terms of service. The Peace Corps volunteers category page may include a more extensive list of individuals. Business * Patricia Cloherty, Chairman and CEO, Delta Private Equity Partners, former Chairman of The U.S. Russia Investment Fund, Deputy Administration for the U.S. Small Business Administration (Brazil 1963-65) * Reed Hastings, founder and CEO of Netflix (Swaziland 1983–85) * Michael McCaskey, chairman of the board, Chicago Bears (Ethiopia 1965–67) * Bob Haas, Chairman Emeritus of Levi Strauss & Co., son of Walter A. Haas Jr., and the great-great-grandnephew of the company's founder, Levi Strauss (Ivory Coast 1964–66) * Alberto Ibargüen, President and CEO of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation (Venezuela, 1966–68) * Christopher Hedrick, former CEO NextStep, former CEO of Intrepid Learning and Kepler and country director of Peace Corps Senegal (S ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
United States Peace Corps
The Peace Corps is an independent agency and program of the United States government that trains and deploys volunteers to provide international development assistance. It was established in March 1961 by an executive order of President John F. Kennedy Executive Order 10924 and authorized by Congress the following September by the Peace Corps Act. Kennedy first publicly proposed the Peace Corps during his 1960 presidential campaign as a means to improve America's global image and leadership in the Cold War; he cited the Soviet Union's deployment of skilled citizens "abroad in the service of world communism" and argued the U.S. must do the same to advance values such as democracy and liberty. The Peace Corps was formally established within three months of Kennedy's presidency, garnering both bipartisan congressional support and popular support, particularly among recent university graduates. The official goal of the Peace Corps is to assist developing countries by providing skil ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Laurence Leamer
Laurence Leamer (born October 30, 1941) is an American author and journalist. Leamer is a former Ford Fellow in International Development at the University of Oregon and a former International Fellow at Columbia University. He is regarded as an expert on the Kennedy family and has appeared in numerous media outlets discussing American politics. Leamer has also written best-selling biographies of other Americans, including Johnny Carson, the Ronald Reagan#Nancy Davis, Reagan family, and Arnold Schwarzenegger. He has also written a book about Donald Trump's historical resort, Mar-a-Lago. His most recent book, Capote's Women, was a national bestseller. It is being made into an eight-part series starring Naomi Watts and directed by Gus Van Sant. Biography Leamer was born in Chicago and later moved to upstate New York with his family where he attended Vestal Central High School. He attended Antioch College where he spent a year in France, studied at the List of public universities ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Howard Ashman
Howard is an English-language given name originating from Old French Huard (or Houard) from a Germanic source similar to Old High German ''*Hugihard'' "heart-brave", or ''*Hoh-ward'', literally "high defender; chief guardian". It is also probably in some cases a confusion with the Old Norse cognate ''Haward'' (''Hávarðr''), which means "high guard" and as a surname also with the unrelated Hayward. In some rare cases it is from the Old English ''eowu hierde'' "ewe herd". In Anglo-Norman the French digram ''-ou-'' was often rendered as ''-ow-'' such as ''tour'' → ''tower'', ''flour'' (western variant form of ''fleur'') → ''flower'', etc. (with svarabakhti). A diminutive is "Howie" and its shortened form is "Ward" (most common in the 19th century). Between 1900 and 1960, Howard ranked in the U.S. Top 200; between 1960 and 1990, it ranked in the U.S. Top 400; between 1990 and 2004, it ranked in the U.S. Top 600. People with the given name Howard or its variants include: Given ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Richard Wiley
Richard Wiley (born November 19, 1944) is an American novelist and short story writer whose first novel, ''Soldiers in Hiding (novel), Soldiers in Hiding'' won the 1987 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. He has published five other novels and a number of short stories (see "Works" below). Wiley holds a B.A. from the University of Puget Sound and an M.A. from Sophia University in Tokyo; he earned his MFA in creative writing from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where he studied under John Irving. Since 1989 he has been a professor of English at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Wiley is professor emeritus of English and a board member of Black Mountain Institute at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Wiley was a member of the UNLV English Department faculty from 1989 to 2015 and cofounded UNLV's graduate Creative Writing Program. He was inducted into the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame in 2005. Works *''Soldiers in Hiding (novel), Soldiers in Hiding.'' Boston: Atlantic Monthly P, 1986. * ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Moritz Thomsen
Martin Moritz Thomsen Titus (1915–1991), known as Moritz Thomsen, was an American writer, farmer and Peace Corps volunteer. He worked and wrote in the small town of Rio Verde, Ecuador. His books have been praised by writers such as Paul Theroux, Thomas Cahill and Larry McMurtry. Early and later life Thomsen was born in 1915 into a wealthy American family in Seattle. His namesake was his grandfather, a powerful Washington businessman. Charlie, his father, was President of Centennial Mills (Krusteaz Brand) and a multi-millionaire at the turn of the 20th century. As detailed in his memoirs, his relationship with his father was extremely strained, with Thomsen describing the man as "tyrannical." During World War II, Thomsen served as a B-17 Flying Fortress bombardier in the Eighth Air Force. At age 44 he was working as a farmer in California when he decided to join the Peace Corps. In 1964, at 48 years old, Thomsen went to Ecuador as one of the first Peace Corps volunteers. Upon ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
American Book Award
The American Book Award is an American literary award that annually recognizes a set of books and people for "outstanding literary achievement". According to the 2010 awards press release, it is "a writers' award given by other writers" and "there are no categories, no nominees, and therefore no losers.""For Immediate Release:" (August 5, 2010). Before Columbus Foundation. Retrieved February 17, 2012. The Award is administered by the multi-cultural focused nonprofit , which established it in 1978 and inaugurated it in 1980. The Award honors excellence in American literature without restriction to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bob Shacochis
Bob Shacochis (born September 9, 1951) is an American novelist, short story writer, and literary journalist. He teaches creative writing at Florida State University. Writing career Shacochis was born in Pennsylvania, but grew up in the Washington, D.C. suburb of McLean, Virginia. He was educated at the University of Missouri and the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa, and currently teaches creative writing at Florida State University. His first short-story collection, ''Easy in the Islands'', was published in 1985 and received the National Book Award in category First Work of Fiction."National Book Awards – 1985" . ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Micronesia
Micronesia (, ) is a subregion of Oceania, consisting of about 2,000 small islands in the western Pacific Ocean. It has a close shared cultural history with three other island regions: the Philippines to the west, Polynesia to the east, and Melanesia to the south—as well as with the wider community of Austronesian peoples. The region has a tropical marine climate and is part of the Oceanian realm. It includes four main archipelagos—the Caroline Islands, the Gilbert Islands, the Mariana Islands, and the Marshall Islands—as well as numerous islands that are not part of any archipelago. Political control of areas within Micronesia varies depending on the island, and is distributed among six sovereign nations. Some of the Caroline Islands are part of the Republic of Palau and some are part of the Federated States of Micronesia (often shortened to "FSM" or "Micronesia"—not to be confused with the identical name for the overall region). The Gilbert Islands (along with the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Roland Merullo
Roland Merullo (born September 19, 1953) is an American author who writes novels, essays and memoir. His best-known works are the novels '' Breakfast with Buddha'', ''In Revere, In Those Days'', ''A Little Love Story'', ''Revere Beach Boulevard'' and the memoir ''Revere Beach Elegy''. His books have been translated into Spanish, Portuguese, Korean, German, Chinese, Turkish, Bulgarian, Croatian, Slovenian, Czech and Italian. Early life Merullo was born in Boston and raised in Revere, Massachusetts. His father, Roland (Orlando) was a civil engineer who worked for state government and was named personnel secretary by Christian Herter, governor of Massachusetts. He attended Suffolk Law School, passed the Bar at the age of sixty and became an attorney. Eileen, his mother, was a physical therapist who worked at Walter Reed Army Hospital with amputees injured in the Pacific Theatre of World War II. Later, she became a science teacher and taught at the middle school level for 25 years ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mosquito Coast
The Mosquito Coast, also known as the Mosquitia or Mosquito Shore, historically included the area along the eastern coast of present-day Nicaragua and Honduras. It formed part of the Western Caribbean Zone. It was named after the local Miskitu Nation and was long dominated by British interests and known as the Mosquito Kingdom. From 1860 suzerainty of the area was transferred to Nicaragua with the name Mosquito Reserve, and in November 1894 the Mosquito Coast was militarily incorporated into Nicaragua. However, in 1960, the northern part was granted to Honduras by the International Court of Justice. The Mosquito Coast was generally defined as the domain of the Mosquito or Miskitu Kingdom and expanded or contracted with that domain. During the 19th century, the question of the kingdom's borders was a serious issue of international diplomacy between Britain, the United States, Nicaragua, and Honduras. Conflicting claims regarding both the kingdom's extent and arguable nonexisten ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Paul Theroux
Paul Edward Theroux (born April 10, 1941) is an American novelist and travel writer who has written numerous books, including the travelogue, '' The Great Railway Bazaar'' (1975). Some of his works of fiction have been adapted as feature films. He was awarded the 1981 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his novel '' The Mosquito Coast,'' which was adapted for the 1986 movie of the same name and the 2021 television series of the same name. He is the father of British-American authors and documentary filmmakers Marcel and Louis Theroux, the brother of authors Alexander Theroux and Peter Theroux, and uncle of the American actor and screenwriter Justin Theroux. Early life Paul Theroux was born in Medford, Massachusetts, the third of seven children, and son of Catholic parents; his mother, Anne (née Dittami), was Italian American, and his father, Albert Eugene Theroux, was of French-Canadian descent. His mother was a former grammar school teacher and painter, and his father was a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kent Haruf
Alan Kent Haruf (February 24, 1943 – November 30, 2014) was an American novelist. Life Haruf was born in Pueblo, Colorado, the son of a Methodist minister. In 1965 he graduated with a BA from Nebraska Wesleyan University, where he would later teach, and earned an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa in 1973. Before becoming a writer, Haruf worked in a variety of places, including a chicken farm in Colorado, a construction site in Wyoming, a rehabilitation hospital in Denver, a hospital in Phoenix, a presidential library in Iowa, an alternative high school in Wisconsin, and colleges in Nebraska and Illinois and as an English teacher with the Peace Corps in Turkey. He lived with his wife, Cathy, in Salida, Colorado, until his death in 2014. He had three daughters from his first marriage. All of Haruf's novels take place in the fictional town of Holt, in eastern Colorado. Holt is based on Yuma, Colorado, one of Haruf's residences in the early 1980s. His ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
