"Cool, beautiful, intelligent and elegantly arrogant, Dr. Estelle Granger ran the hospital with an iron hand.......I was stunned one morning when she burst into my office, lips trembling with rage and tears streaming from her bruised, swollen eyes......Near collapse she hoarsely implored me, 'You Americans are the big shots now. Can't you do something? Everything is collapsing and nobody is in control I don't care about myself It's the patients It's Vietnam ' Her words troubled me as much as the incident itself. And what she said was true. Nobody was in control. Meanwhile the Viet Cong and...

"Encounters: A Memoir - Relationships Journeys from Around the World" takes the reader on a journey from a segregated village in the southern US to exotic places in Europe and Asia. There are stops in war-torn Vietnam, a visit to an abandoned palace in Bangladesh where goats waltz on a deserted ballroom floor, a life-threatening confrontation with police in Paris and many other adventures. In these absorbing tales, the author shares his cross-cultural experiences and describes the challenges he faced in trying to become a citizen of the world.