This is political fiction from the front lines. An unusually evocative and immersive work based on lived experience, the authentic international narratives in WORLD OF WORLDS wrestle with the tumultuous years 1968-1981, but they are painfully, ironically current. 

The characters, Americans mostly-tough, rebellious youth, far from home, on bad roads, usually broke-test cultural and racial limits in strange, alluring, but pitiless surroundings, exposed to relentless existential and physical pressures that threaten their moral underpinnings and their very survival.

WORLD OF WORLDS readers prize Vietnam-era historical fiction, post-colonial Africa travel stories, character-driven 1970s political thrillers, coming-of-age adventure. They want moral seriousness alongside the action. Anyone who has traveled the world's back roads-foreigners abroad, children of expats, tourists, students of post-independence Africa, Africans, Europeans, Americans, Australians-will recognize the authenticity immediately.

The author is an accomplished novelist, journalist, and diplomat. But above all, he was there.

Richard Scott Sacks is an accomplished writer, US diplomat, and world traveler, whose career placed him in the crosshairs of diplomacy, conflict, and political consequence-crisscrossing Africa, Europe, and the Middle East in his youth, then in Foreign Service postings in Pakistan, Panama, Korea, Vietnam, Morocco, Mexico, Congo-Zaïre, and Washington, DC.Mr. Sacks's debut novel, the critically acclaimed Drinking from the Stream, has won more than a dozen accolades. His academic study with SAIS professor Riordan Roett, Paraguay: The Personalist Legacy, was named Outstanding Academic Book by Choice Magazine.A former newspaper and wire service reporter, Mr. Sacks wrote for The Miami Herald from Asunción, Paraguay, the Associated Press (Detroit, Michigan), and The Middlesex News (Framingham, Massachusetts).Mr. Sacks holds master's degrees from National War College and Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). He, his wife, Aida, and their children live near Washington, DC.