Ben East Books

Citizenship | Literature

Select novels, short stories, and nonfiction on contemporary life.

PROFILES IN SERVICE

What began as a bold experiment in grassroots service produced future ambassadors to help guide U.S. diplomacy through seven decades of global upheaval.

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Novels

Read, Listen, Watch

  • Crime Novel Review – The Carrier

    Preston Lang’s discreetly funny debut crime novel The Carrier is an amoral story about semi-decent, semi-depraved, mostly-human people who eat and argue and screw genuinely enough as they pursue their proverbial pot of gold in parts unknown of the U.S.A. Some get what they got coming, some get less, others more, but always around the corner is another day…

  • ONE DEAD COP

    Taillights cut a pool of red in the dark where three African heavies in police uniform manned the makeshift roadblock.  A fourth figure loomed over the driver-side door two cars up.  The cops held their rifles clumsily.  Probably they were cops, Raines thought. Criminals in the West African Republic handled weapons better than the police…

  • Prohibition

    The idea is to write a story in 100 words flat. The boys weren’t allowed to have guns.  But they wanted to play gangster, so Howard cut rifles out of cardboard. “We want pistols,” 5-year-old Mickey said. “And Uzis,” said Danny, age 3. Howard, who watched many movies with pistols and Uzis while the boys’…

  • Review (Honduras) – Paradise in Front of Me

    Paradise in Front of Me – Realizing Life’s Beauty in an Unexpected Place – by Kevin G. Finch (Honduras 2004–06) The recurring image in Kevin G. Finch’s Paradise in Front of Me is that of an impoverished Honduran child looking up at a locked schoolhouse door. Shut out again. The author and the residents of El Paraíso repeatedly find…

  • GREEN

    When the Peace Corps recruiter called to offer Pete Seward a position teaching English in Malawi Seward asked, “Where’s that?” “Africa.” Seward thought about that.  Where the application had asked for geographical preferences, Seward had written: “Anywhere in the Pacific.  Definitely not Africa.”  So he reminded the recruiter of this. “I do see that.  But,…

  • Review (Niger) – A Dry and Thirsty Land

    A Dry and Thirsty Land: The Misadventures of a Peace Corps Volunteer in West Africa – by Bryant Wieneke (Niger 1974–76) Mr. Wieneke’s engaging 60,000-word memoir contains all the stuff of Peace Corps legend, from encounters with exotic insects and large snakes to bouts of diarrhea and Malarial fever. It also contains a large dose of the question:…

  • THIS IS HOW WE TWEET

      Assistant Secretary Crickshaw wants to tweet. His request (order) reaches us in Electronic Media via the staff aides in the front office, setting in motion a whole series of actions that repeat the actions of the day before and the day before that, all the way back to the day we first tweeted, which…

  • ONE DEAD COP

    Taillights cut a pool of red in the dark where three African heavies in police uniform manned the makeshift roadblock.  A fourth figure loomed over the driver-side door two cars up.  The cops held their rifles clumsily.  Probably they were cops, Raines thought. Criminals in the West African Republic handled weapons better than the police…

  • GUTS

    George craves the syringe with an addict’s distress. I have one thumb on the plunger. I put the other in his mouth. The plastic syringe tip curves along my crooked thumb between George’s lips. I press the plunger carefully and let the milk flow.The ruddy face of Senator Teflon–that’s my name for him–fills the television. He…

  • Heaven Is Coming Home, Part II

    …David’s richly textured writing reads like romantic poetry.  Yet there is a clarity to the telling born of steady revelation in sign and image.  The narrator, like an expert kite handler, works his string in concert with the wind to lead the colors of his craft across our minds’ eye.   As our protagonist Rovin,…

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