Around the Corner: Reflections on American Wars, Violence, Terrorism, and Hope

Mr. Davis gives us a film noir collection of intriguing, heart breaking, and insightful essays. Real people and actual events emerge from this collection in ways you won't forget. Each draws us deeper into the questions we raise when we demand others serve in the secret world for their country.

In Around the Corner we find more thought provoking true stories from the Cold War, its bloody aftermath, and our own America today. Rain swept streets and dark corners serve not only as background, but also as metaphor. Around dark corners on a rainy street, what seems at first glance clear, might not be so. We see only indistinct outlines, as through a glass darkly; what may be true, could as well be only partly so, or even tragically false. So too with our beliefs about who we are. He observes events, people, laws, chance, and history from the perspective of a soldier, historian, liaison officer, husband and father.

Davis reminds us that actions in the secret world, especially against spies and terrorists, when conducted by a liberal democracy, give no one a free pass from basic right and wrong. You'll find a strange new world tantalizingly revealed here. You'll even find reason for hope.

John William Davis is a retired US Army counterintelligence officer, civil servant, and linguist. He was commissioned from Washington University in St. Louis as an artillery officer in the 101st Air Assault Division. Thereafter, he went into counterintelligence and served some 37 years. A linguist, Mr. Davis learned foreign languages in each country he served. As a consequence of the Cold War and its bitter aftermath he wrote Rainy Street Stories, 'Reflections on Secret Wars, Terrorism, and Espionage'. He wanted to reveal not only true events, but also the moral and ethical impact of the secret world on real people. With the publication of Around the Corner, Davis expands his reflections on conflicted human nature to our present day traumas of fear, and causes for hope.