Wow. I haven't come across such a compellingly readable non-fiction book in a while. The author really brought the crises of Rwanda, Darfur, Banda Aceh and Haiti to life with the locations almost as intriguing as the people she met while there. Naive do gooders, cyncial burned out career NGO workers, voluntourists. None of those solely describes humanitarian aid workers, but the field is made up of all of them and together they tell the stories of worldwide disaster relief. Especially when Polyanna turns jaded and finds herself nearly stoning the locals.

I'm about the same age as the author and like her, the word genocide first entered my life's vocabulary with the Hutu and Tutsi in Rwanda. That was happening here & now, not far in the past like Hitler & the Jews. This book follows Alexander's journey from Rwanda as an intern to the last full time long gig in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake. She also took us to places like Darfur and Sierra Leone and helped me get to know the people like Claudetta, Charles and Ishaq who I came to want to know more. I like how she made a point to differentiate between those disasters with a compelling media clip vs. the chronic problems that don't have the easy funding, yet kill just as many.

Reads like a novel, but incredibly eye-opening especially with regard to how to best help when the next disaster hits. On a personal level, I could identify with her thoughts on her mother not knowing she & her brothers as an adult. I sometimes wonder what dad would have thought of my career path. While I could never do this line of work, I admire she and her colleagues who do.