I've been researching the story of Lt. Daniel Dawson, a pilot shot down over Vietnam in November of 1964, and his older brother Donald. I first heard of the Dawson brothers' story in a sermon that quoted Edmund Clowney's own sermon, Sharing the Father's Welcome. You can read the following excerpt in its entirety, here.

During the war in Vietnam, Army Lieutenant Daniel Dawson’s reconnaissance plane went down over the Vietcong jungle. When his brother Donald heard the report, he sold everything he had, left his wife with $20, and bought passage to Vietnam. There he equipped himself with a soldier’s gear and wandered through the guerilla-controlled jungle, looking for his brother. He carried leaflets picturing the plane and describing in Vietnamese the reward for news of the missing pilot. He became known as Anh toi phi-cong—the brother of the pilot. A Life magazine reporter described his perilous search.

The Life magazine article in question was called "A Haunted Man's Perilous Search," from the March 12, 1965 edition of Life. Life is no longer in print but it is owned by time, and I'm still trying to find a back-issue of the article.

Time, however, did have a brief follow-up article on Donald's search, found here:

Californian Donald C. Dawson, 25, emerged from the jungle north of Bien Hoa airbase and reported that his reckless, obsessive search for his brother, Army Lieut. Daniel Dawson, was over after nine months—four of them as a Viet Cong prisoner. "They told me he was dead and gave me a flight vest he wore, and then they told me to go," said Don sadly. He never saw the grave, but the Viet Cong claimed they would tend it until Dawson could come back after the war to recover the body of his brother, shot down last Nov. 6 in a light reconnaissance plane. For Don, it was time to go home to his wife and four children in Costa Mesa, Calif.

The story really kicked me in the gut the first time I heard it related, and its one I'd like to write up in detail. I've found a couple more detailed but somewhat conflicting recounts of Donald's time in Vietnam here(from The First Marine Captured in Vietnam, by Donald Price) and here (from Honor Bound, by Stuart Rochester, Frederick Kiley).

In the meantime, more searching.

OK. Not going to have the time for the retroblog today so that's still on hold. It'll be the long one to write so I am of course putting it off. The easy one, since its already written, would be story time, but I'm not letting myself off the hook. So instead, its reading update time. This one will be short.

What is the What (Eggers) is one of the best written books I've ever read. If you haven't read it, your life is less complete than mine. That is my review of that book. Also, right before I last left NYC, Mo and I went to hear a reading by Eggers and another author writing about tragedies in Africa (specifically Nigeria) at the 92nd Street Y. My opinion on most great writers is that they're not as smooth in person as you would expect them to be based on their journalistic expertise. Eggers was no different, but it was still cool to get my book signed.

Continuing with the crisis in Sudan theme, one of the next books I read was Not On Our Watch: The Mission to End the Genocide in Darfur and Beyond (Pendergast / Cheadle). The book was good but not a lot of news to me. I've been involved for a while now, this was more focused on people who aren't aware of the problems. The information has been out there for years, though, for those who cared to inform themselves. And that's not to in any way claim that I got to the party when I should have, I was shamefully late myself.

I needed something a little less heavy after that so now I'm about halfway through A Prayer for Owen Meany, which is also great.

I lost my copy of Of Mice and Men, I completely quit studying the Afrikaans for myriad reasons, the most prevalent being a lack of time. I started Lewis' A Grief Observed (again) but then put that down for a while too. Since I lost my short Steinbeck read, I started Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (again) - don't ask me why my brain works like that, but it seemed fitting enough. I think I'm just avoiding starting my next, longer Steinbeck read, Grapes of Wrath. Its not that I don't want to read it, its that for some reason I don't like being in the middle of two thick books at the same time, and Owen Meany's thick.

I've decided my wish-list of books I want to get is way too long at the moment, plus I have a number on my desk to churn through that I can't even remember all the titles of, so instead, here's a few random ones I expect to read soon:

The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism (Keller) - by my pastor in NYC, a nice relief from Dawson's The God Delusion, et. al. the other atheism / agnosticism books of late.

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (Dillard)

Blink (Gladwell) - in my continuing endeavor to not read popular books at the zenith of their market appeal.

Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game (Lewis, not the one I read as regularly, though)

Healing the Children of War (Kilbourn) - one of my colleagues on this project who's familiar with my pipe dreams got this for me, and I plan to get it from her when I'm in LA. If Uganda works out, this will be read before I get there.

Reading update time!

Recently finished (in no particular order):

A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail - Bill Bryson. Bryson did an incredible job researching the subject and related subjects at large, and intertwined them cunningly with his story of adventures on the Appalachian Trail. I learned a lot about the trail and enjoyed the read, from his rather comical perspective. I'd never try the AT but perhaps the PCT someday...I think that would be a cool honeymoon, or perhaps fun to do with my brothers. Not both together, though. Anyhow, I'm going to try to add Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything to my list in the near future.

Blue Like Jazz - Donald Miller. This was, like many books, about what I expected of it. Not a completely amazing book, but it did make some good points, sometimes in interesting ways. Miller at times almost seemed to be trying a little too hard to be a spiritual "hipster," for lack of a better way of putting it - but it was still a pretty decent read. I like reading this genre because its close to some stuff I hope to write myself someday.

Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs - A Low Culture Manifesto - Chuck Klosterman. Basically a semi-structured rant on pop culture in the US. Really funny at parts, a bit pedantic at others. Kind of like Bell, above, came off as trying really hard to not appear to be trying to be cool, so as to actually be cool...and basically just losing the reader in the process.

Metal Men: How Marc Rich Defrauded the Country, Evaded the Law, and Became the World's Most Sought-After Corporate Criminals - A. Craig Copetas. Rich basically single-handedly created the futures markets for things like oil and a million other things that come out of the earth - metals, ores, etc.. He avoided paying hundreds of millions of dollars to the US and fled the country - Clinton pardoned him on his last day in office but Rich has never returned to the states - likely because acceptance of a presidential pardon implies guilt, and he's still afraid they'll figure out a way to get him. Rich also cunningly bought up the entire world's supply of boron at one point, allowing him to set the price on it, which he drove up - which had a significant affect on his mass ownership of other products dependent on a cheap supply of boron - although the book doesn't go into a lot of detail on that in particular. Interesting book for us businessy types.

Sex God: Exploring the Endless Connections Between Sexuality and Spirituality - Rob Bell. Similar to the BLJ genre, above - I liked it because I'd like to write from my own perspective on similar topics someday. Bell is a fantastically smart guy, however there were certain things (read: endless, long endnotes that should have just been included in the regular text) about his writing style that didn't quite jive with me. Also, not a lot of new ideas here, but some interesting additions / extrapolations to old ones.

Currently reading:
What is the What - Eggers;
Of Mice and Men - Steinbeck;
Teach Yourself Afrikaans - McDermott

(I can't read one book at a time, its a problem)
(There's probably 20-30 books that were read between these ones and the last time I updated my sidebar. FYI. I will probably never remember what they all were.)