This deeply honest and optimistic memoir is told through stories chronicling the personal transformation and frenetic journey of a blond-haired California beach boy into his emergence as an unorthodox international human rights renegade. It charts the unlikely evolution of a rather clueless American kid into a fighter for the rights of poor and vulnerable who worked for justice in more than 80 countries and became an ardent world citizen along the way. This book describes in intimate detail the highs and lows of an adventurous life as a global human rights legal activist across the globe. It provides an insider's view, rarely seen or understood by the public at large, of what it takes to live a human rights life. The book touches on everything from working in war zones, desperately trying to stop planned forced evictions and repairing displacement when prevention didn't work to writing the laws that now protect millions against various forms of human rights abuse (or at least they are supposed to!). It tells us inexplicable synchronicities across all of the world's continents, slums (and love) in Santo Domingo, Bangkok and Manila, wars in the Balkans and beyond, earthquakes and tsunamis in Japan, Sri Lanka, and the Maldives, reversing ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, helping Timor Leste in its earlier days as an independent country, interludes with the Dalai Lama, presidents, prime ministers, activists and much more. Home reveals the personal struggles of fighting for justice when one's best friend faces torture and then the author deals with muggings, human suffering too extreme to handle and repeated near-death experiences and illness after illness after illness. If you've ever wondered what it takes to change the world, or at least a lifelong attempt to so do, then this is the book you've been looking for.

This deeply honest and optimistic memoir is told through stories chronicling the personal transformation and frenetic journey of a blond-haired California beach boy into his emergence as an unorthodox international human rights renegade. It charts the unlikely evolution of a rather clueless American kid into a fighter for the rights of poor and vulnerable who worked for justice in more than 80 countries and became an ardent world citizen along the way. This book describes in intimate detail the highs and lows of an adventurous life as a global human rights legal activist across the globe. It provides an insider's view, rarely seen or understood by the public at large, of what it takes to live a human rights life. The book touches on everything from working in war zones, desperately trying to stop planned forced evictions and repairing displacement when prevention didn't work to writing the laws that now protect millions against various forms of human rights abuse (or at least they are supposed to!). It tells us inexplicable synchronicities across all of the world's continents, slums (and love) in Santo Domingo, Bangkok and Manila, wars in the Balkans and beyond, earthquakes and tsunamis in Japan, Sri Lanka, and the Maldives, reversing ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, helping Timor Leste in its earlier days as an independent country, interludes with the Dalai Lama, presidents, prime ministers, activists and much more. Home reveals the personal struggles of fighting for justice when one's best friend faces torture and then the author deals with muggings, human suffering too extreme to handle and repeated near-death experiences and illness after illness after illness. If you've ever wondered what it takes to change the world, or at least a lifelong attempt to so do, then this is the book you've been looking for.

This deeply honest and optimistic memoir is told through stories chronicling the personal transformation and frenetic journey of a blond-haired California beach boy into his emergence as an unorthodox international human rights renegade. It charts the unlikely evolution of a rather clueless American kid into a fighter for the rights of poor and vulnerable who worked for justice in more than 80 countries and became an ardent world citizen along the way. This book describes in intimate detail the highs and lows of an adventurous life as a global human rights legal activist across the globe. It provides an insider's view, rarely seen or understood by the public at large, of what it takes to live a human rights life. The book touches on everything from working in war zones, desperately trying to stop planned forced evictions and repairing displacement when prevention didn't work to writing the laws that now protect millions against various forms of human rights abuse (or at least they are supposed to!). It tells us inexplicable synchronicities across all of the world's continents, slums (and love) in Santo Domingo, Bangkok and Manila, wars in the Balkans and beyond, earthquakes and tsunamis in Japan, Sri Lanka, and the Maldives, reversing ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, helping Timor Leste in its earlier days as an independent country, interludes with the Dalai Lama, presidents, prime ministers, activists and much more. Home reveals the personal struggles of fighting for justice when one's best friend faces torture and then the author deals with muggings, human suffering too extreme to handle and repeated near-death experiences and illness after illness after illness. If you've ever wondered what it takes to change the world, or at least a lifelong attempt to so do, then this is the book you've been looking for.