WorldView Magazine: WorldView Fall Winter 2025
Other Rivers: A Chinese Education
I have been an admirer of Peter Hessler’s work since reading his first book, River Town, about his Peace Corps service at a Chinese university in the 1990s. I was particularly drawn to that book because of my own Peace Corps work in a Korean university and professional ties to China. Hessler wrote eloquently about his Peace Corps experience in a way that I think any returned Volunteer could relate to. Other Rivers: A Chinese Education, Hessler’s latest book about China, is just as interesting and satisfying as the three other books about the country he wrote as a journalist...
When a Picture Sells a Thousand Words
WorldView spoke with noted book designer Peter Mendelsund, creative director at The Atlantic magazine and author of multiple novels and cover design books, to understand the process of making a good cover, knowing it will be judged.
Letter to a First-Time Peace Corps Writer
No matter who you are, sitting down to a blank page to try and tell the story of your life can be daunting. But I’m here to reassure you that, as a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer, you have a great story to tell. The key question is where to start. Jacques Barzun, an accomplished writer and historian who taught at Columbia University, wrote that to become a writer you have to convince yourself that you are working in clay, not marble—on paper, not eternal bronze—so let that first sentence be as stupid as it wishes. Just put it down, then...
A Life Lived in Books
Dan Pelzer started recording every book he read in 1962, when he arrived in Dharan, Nepal, as a Peace Corps Volunteer. After he passed away on July 1, Marci posted her father’s meticulously handwritten record of the 3,599 books he had read over the previous 62 years online.
Helicopters and The Himalayan Gourmet Cookbook
When Diana Oppedal supported the Peace Corps medical office in Kathmand making house calls by helicopter to those in the most remote sites in the mountains, she never thought it would lead to publishing a cook book.
Pitch Perfect
These days, there are more pathways to publication than ever before: do-it-yourself, web publishing, print on demand, vanity presses, hybrid publishers, and indie presses, to name a few. But if you dream of seeing your book on the shelves of airport bookstores or featured on an endcap at Barnes & Noble, you’ll want to shoot for a deal with one of the “Big Five” publishers—Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Hachette Book Group, and Simon & Schuster—each of which has a multitude of genre-specific imprints. Breaking into traditional publishing can be daunting. Most Big Five publishers will not accept unsolicited manuscripts,...
Five Peace Corps Blogs That Cut Through the Clichés
From field notes to long-form essays, these writers capture the nuance and complexity of life abroad.
Snapshots of Service
RPCV Sam Friedberg (Madagascar 2017–19) has spent more than a year traveling solo through Africa and Asia, staying with over 50 Peace Corps Volunteers at their sites along the way.
Bookstores Without Borders
Imagine you are living in the capital city of Guatemala. You need an escape, a place to find peace in your daily routine. In different countries, in different languages, bookstores create community through reading.
Leading (and Leaving) with Radical Empathy
When I accepted the opportunity (and privilege) to lead the National Peace Corps Association as president and CEO three years ago, I felt the same mixture of excitement and responsibility that I did when stepping off the plane for my Peace Corps service in Bolivia in 1999. Both experiences came with an unspoken promise—to listen deeply, to build bridges across differences, and to do my part to keep faith with the belief that people of goodwill working together can change the world. While I knew our community would face some challenging times when I took on this role, it would...
