An unusual military career and a compulsion to keep moving took me to more than twenty countries. I lived in Cold War Europe as an empire failed. While the Soviet Union lay dying, I explored its guts. Assignments took me to the Americas, Northern Africa and the Middle East. Personal fascination and family ties drew me to the eastern Mediterranean world again and again, and God's saving hand brought me many times out of it. I saw the world through my own eyes, not refracted by libraries. Perhaps there is too much of a dissenter in me, but I believe that I experienced the world with greater clarity than many of my peers.
