Unveilings: A Desert Journey, 1973-1983 - Softcover

Clark Taylor, Patricia Adora

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1419622285 ISBN 13: 9781419622281

Publisher: BookSurge Publishing, 2006

Synopsis

Unveilings, first published in 2004 and now in its 2nd edition, reveals the author's Middle East experiences during the 1970s and 80s, continues with Capitol Hill experiences including 9-11 when the author lived on Capitol Hill, and ends with a 21st Century view of the Iraq War and current events including the ISIS threat. During these years of global power shifts, the author's world view transformed from innocent to knowledgeable and far more sophisticated. In this world of new realities, she understood the threat to women’s rights and to all human rights. As the author traversed a raw, desert land ruled by strict Sunni Islam, she realized the inevitable clash of cultures looming on the horizon. In the United States in 1973, Roe v. Wade ruled unconstitutional a state law that banned abortions; thereby strengthening women’s rights and freedoms. In that same year, the Arab Oil Embargo greatly empowered the Saudi nation ruled by Sunni Islam as petrodollars poured into a nation with no respect for women or democracy. Storm clouds gathered on the horizon; women’s rights were at the center of the storm. Middle East nations, one by one, fell under a black veil; and on September 11, 2001, the storm came to America. Now, in 2014, war rages in the Middle East; in America, women, once more, fight for women’s rights and for all human rights.

About this title

From the Inside Flap:

Unveilings, A Desert Journey, 1973-1983, is a true story about the author’s life and travels in the Middle East during the decade of the 1970s and early 1980s. The author began her travels in northern Italy in 1973, the year of the first oil embargo. During the 1970s, she journeyed from Italy to Jordan, the West Bank, Israel, Gaza, Egypt, and throughout Saudi Arabia where she witnessed an ancient world entering modernity and about to explode onto the global scene. In the early 1980s, she returned to the Middle East to live in Israel for nine months to record the story of the Multi-National Forces and Observers who built and maintained the Egypt-Israeli peace, as outlined in the Camp David Accords. This peace holds until this day. Unveilings is an unusual mixture of geopolitics, religion, and lively personal stories. The author’s photographs and notes from those years are woven into her true story of remarkable people and places. It is a story of international friendships that cut across religion and politics, of women’s struggles to survive, of men clutching an ancient world and refusing to yield to modernity, of petroleum politics, of U.S. political strategy in the making, and of the “peacekeepers,” who overcame all the odds to change war into peace. Quotes: “No matter where I look upon the canvas, there is an endless desert, an ocean of sand where the sun rises and sets. In the midst of the desert there is peace like a river, even while brutality lurks nearby. There is war that runs red, a dark smear across all the other colors. Finally, there are the writers, the great painters upon the landscape. In the endless, timeless desert nights, prophets and poets write down ancient stories about life, love, and war with a passionate fury giving life to dead heroes. I want to walk upright into the painting. Like Alice in Wonderland, I want to meet the characters, slide into the fantasy, run away in fear, and try to make some sense of it all. “Off with her head!” Oh, I hope not! Actually, I lived to tell the story; that’s no small miracle.”

About the Author:

Patricia graduated from University of Maryland and received a Master of Arts degree from Duke University. She was married to Chester Taylor for twenty-eight years, a professional engineer (now deceased) with a long, successful, and distinguished career with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Their children, Preston and Al, grew up living in the Pacific Rim, in Europe, and in the Middle East. Patricia’s book details their years in Europe and the Middle East. In 1982, while living in Tel Aviv, Israel, Patricia and her husband each received Certificates of Achievement for “contributing to peace in the Middle East.” Patricia’s extensive knowledge of culture, science, religion, art, and politics, allows her to blend conflicting, and difficult parts of a project into a worthwhile and memorable success. Her skill and ability can be seen in the establishment of Florida’s Timucuan National Preserve which she initiated in 1984 with U. S. Congressman Charles Bennett of Jacksonville, Florida who authored eight books on Timucuan Indian culture and early Florida history. While working as legislative assistant in his Washington office, Patricia drafted legislative language for the Legislative Counsel who wrote the bill. During the decade of the 90s, Patricia’s legislative work covered the major issues of our time from health care reform to international events, taking her on investigative trips to the former Soviet Union, Africa, and Ecuador. After years of travel, Patricia relocated to her Florida home. Today she’s a grandmother, writer, and artist. Some of her favorite pastimes include long walks on the beach and time spent with family and friends.

About this edition

• Publisher: BookSurge Publishing
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 1419622285
• ISBN 13: 9781419622281
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 144