The Foreign Service Journal, November 2014

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | NOVEMBER 2014 59 torted images that have been conveyed by popular media. In this coffee-table book, the author, a former ambassador to Zimbabwe, offers his own take on what Africa is all about. From the Gulf of Guinea to the Indian Ocean, fromMount Kilimanjaro to the Kalahari Desert, he takes you up close and personal to see the diversity of landscapes, wildlife and people that make up this huge and fascinating continent—the birthplace of humanity. Charles Ray is also the author of two novels and a work of historical fiction (see p. 50). Sacred Landscapes Daniel Miller, Vajra Publications, 2014, $51.95, paperback, 241 pages. Daniel Miller first visited Nepal and began trekking in the Himalayan region in 1974. Trained as a rangeland ecologist, he has used photography to document his work and journeys since then—in Afghanistan, Bhutan, China, India, Nepal and Mongolia—and over the years has published many of the photos in books and displayed them in exhibitions. In this collection of 172 black-and-white images spanning 35 years, Miller presents his vision of the “sacred landscape” of this region. Mountains, of course, dominate the landscape and, as Miller writes in his introduction to the book, “It doesn’t take long among these mountains to acquire a sense of the frailty and insignificance of human life.” But it is the people who often generate the most lasting memories. In these photos Miller captures the poise, friendliness and generosity with which they pursue their lives in what most Westerners would consider very difficult conditions. As an ecologist, Miller also focuses on the interactions among vegetation, animals and people on the landscape. Here, the yak is a central feature. And, as Miller says, one can- not travel in the Himalaya and Tibet without also encountering features of Buddhism, from monasteries and their monks to rituals and festivities. All this, too, he captures with his lens. Daniel Miller is director of the Office of Economic Develop- ment and Government for USAID Mission Philippines. He is the author of several previous books about the region, includ- ing Drokpa: Nomads of the Tibetan Plateau and Himalaya , (2008). Several of them are available online in ebook format ( http://www.blurb.com/b/583011-a-sublime-realm-buddhist- landscapes), and his photographic work can be viewed at http:// socialdocumentary.net/photographer/danielmiller. POTPOURRI On the Noodle Road: From Beijing to Rome with Love and Pasta Jen Lin-Liu, Riverhead Books, 2014, $16/paperback, $7.99/Kindle, 400 pages. As a newlywed traveling in Italy, food writer Jen Lin-Liu was struck by culinary echoes of the delicacies she ate and cooked back in China, where she’d lived for more than a decade. “Who really invented the noodle?” she wondered, like many before her. How had food and culture moved along the Silk Road, the ancient trade route linking Asia to Europe? And what could still be felt of those long-ago migrations? Lin-Liu set out to discover those connections, both historical and personal, for herself by eating a path through western China and on into Central Asia, Iran, Turkey and across the Mediter- ranean.
 The journey took her into the private kitchens where the headscarves come off, and women not only knead and simmer, but confess and confide. As she stirs and samples, listening to the women talk about their lives and longings, Lin-Liu gains a new appreciation of her own marriage, and learns to savor the sweetness of love freely chosen. Jen Lin-Liu is the founder of Black Sesame Kitchen, a Beijing cooking school, and the author of Serve the People: A Stir-Fried Journey Through China (Mariner Books, 2008). She is married to FSO Craig Simons, who has been serving in Chengdu for the past two years and is preparing for a Havana assignment next year. (See p. 37 for Simons’ book, The Devouring Dragon .) Investment Real Estate for the Absentee Landlord: How to Invest in and Manage Real Estate from Overseas Brian Kressin, CreateSpace, 2014, $11.99/ paperback, $7.99/Kindle, 116 pages. When Brian Kressin joined the Foreign Service, he recognized that the reality of spending most of his career overseas would conflict with his desire to invest in real estate. And that reality presented him and his wife, Wenli, with a dilemma. They could either forgo the opportunity to purchase properties, or take the leap and operate as absentee landlords.