What Mary Roach does for the alimentary canal in Gulp and Robin Nagle does for garbage collecting in Picking Up, Jessica Alexander does for global catastrophe in Chasing Chaos--entertainingly enlightening us with a hands-on look at something we'd really rather not see.
A naïve do-gooder, Alexander studied at Penn and then drifted to New York City for PR work, grad school and a fiancé before she shucked them all to fly to Rwanda. As she works for aid organizations in Rwanda, Darfur, Sri Lanka and Haiti, she brings not only compassion but also an eye for the story behind the story and an ear for the humanitarian lingo. She observes aid groups fighting over the Indonesian tsunami's huge relief jackpot "like watching a dog pee to mark his territory" and participates in expat workers' frequent parties.
Reality is never far away, though, like the Darfur curfew "in place because 10 p.m. was when the militia, usually drunk and wielding heavy artillery, came out to patrol the streets." Alexander doesn't shy from the horrors: the starvation and disease, the mindless violence, the red tape and stolen supplies. She wonders if her meager efforts matter. "Did the covers we put on the latrines to stop flies mean anything anymore?" she asks. "The country needed a government that didn't terrorize its own population."
Alexander returns to New York intent on finding ways to deliver humanitarian aid more effectively. She also returns with a new-found respect for the simple efficiency and ease she left behind where "even the DMV seemed well organized." Chasing Chaos is a journey well worth the chase. --Bruce Jacobs, founding partner, Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, Kan.