The Foreign Service Journal, November 2022

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | NOVEMBER 2022 31 Utilizing personal interviews alongside archival research, Ezzatyar explores the different experiences Iranians making their way to Israel had before and during its establishment as a nation, as well as modern attitudes and ongoing shifts in the Iranian Jewish identity. Ali L. Ezzatyar is an attorney adviser with USAID. Before joining the Foreign Service, he practiced law at a number of prominent international firms and served as executive director of the AMENA Center for Entrepreneurship and Development at the University of California–Berkeley. He is the author of The Last Mufti of Iranian Kurdistan: Ethnic and Religious Implications in the Greater Middle East (2016) and has contributed articles to numerous global news outlets including Al Jazeera, BBC World, and NPR. After Ike: On the Trail of the Century-old Journey That Changed America Michael S. Owen, independently published, 2022, $14.95/paperback, print only, 280 pages. Running more than 3,000 miles from New York City to San Francisco, the Lincoln Highway was the first trans- continental road for automobiles in the United States. In 1919, on the eve of the automobile age, a U.S. military convoy set out on a historic journey to travel the entire route; one of the convoy’s officers was 28-year-old Dwight “Ike” Eisenhower. Author Michael Owen traces Ike’s journey using logbooks and other original materi- als from the convoy to tell the story of a trip that, as he puts it, “changed the United States and continues to impact us all.” Though private motorists had made the journey before, the 1919 expedition was by far the largest and best-documented trip to date. It was intended, in part, to publicize the War Department’s participation in the “Good Roads Movement” to encourage further construction of highways as a military asset. Owen’s description of the roads of Washington, D.C., in 1919 will likely fascinate today’s commuters; history buffs will appreciate his depictions of life along the original route. Ambassador (ret.) Michael S. Owen served in Africa and Asia during a 30-year Foreign Service career, including as ambassador to Sierra Leone from 2010 to 2013. He and his wife, Annerieke, live in Reston, Virginia. Glimpses of Harpswell Past and Present: Stories Celebrating Maine’s Bicentennial Edited by Sam Alexander, Carol Coultas, Lili Ott, John Ott, and Robert Porter, Merriconeag Grange & Harpswell Historical Society, 2021, $42/paperback, print only, 308 pages. A collaborative anthology of a Maine town’s social, political, and cultural history, Glimpses of Harpswell Past and Present celebrates the state’s 2020 bicentennial anniver- sary. Local residents of Harpswell, Maine, penned the book’s 18 chapters discussing the community’s demographics, livelihoods (with an emphasis on fishing and farming), architecture, natural surroundings, and more. Pre-statehood Harpswell and the town’s relational struggle with Massachusetts are also examined. Historical and recent photographs are included, and a collection of poems written by residents, “Harpswell in Verse and Rhyme,” makes up the concluding chapter. Forty local resident volunteers contributed to Glimpses of Harpswell Past and Present , including the Maine Bicentennial Committee editors, and the book was both a finalist in the anthology category for the Maine Writers and Publishers Association Book Awards and a nominee for a Historic New England Book Award. Robert Porter, one of the five editors of this book, joined the Foreign Service in 1976 and served in Asia, Africa, and Europe before retiring to Maine in 2006, where he now resides. During his Foreign Service career, he held the positions of deputy chief of mission in Hanoi, Phnom Penh, and Bamako. A history enthusiast, Porter is a former member of the Board of the Harpswell Historical Society. Mad Travelers: A Tale of Wanderlust, Greed and the Quest to Reach the Ends of the Earth Dave Seminara, Post Hill Press, 2021, $17/paperback, e-book available, 256 pages. Mad Travelers centers on the life of one William Simon Baekeland (actually Jesse Simon Gordon), a scam artist who preyed on certain wealthy individ- uals’ desire to travel to the world’s most challenging destinations. During the short life of his Atlas Travels & Expeditions, from 2015 to 2017, Baekeland demonstrated great