Paula Holmes-Eber – författare

Geared up with two tents, six panniers, two tandem bicycles and one stuffed pink pig, Paula and Lorenz Eber set off from Seattle, Washington to cycle the world with their two daughters, eleven-year old Yvonne, and her thirteen year old sister, Anya. Their dream: to pedal in a complete circle around the world using a carbon free, environmentally friendly way to travel. Their goal: to raise awareness of asthma – a disease that Paula has suffered from her entire life – and the world’s desperate need for clean air.

Breathtaking is the exciting and inspiring true story of their adventures. Readers follow the Ebers across Europe, Asia, the South Pacific and North America as they raise their daughters around the globe. School is conducted outdoors on mountaintops. The responsibilities of parenting have been expanded to include hunting for an English copy of the latest Harry Potter book. And family togetherness takes on a new meaning as the Ebers must work together to survive a 100-degree heat wave in Italy, drug smugglers in Russia, a broken foot in New Zealand and a tornado in the U.S. Yet, as the family pedals farther and farther away from home, they realize that the greatest challenge they face is the journey that they must undergo within themselves.

The Ebers returned home twenty-four countries and 14,931 km (9,332 miles) later – raising $65,000 for the non-profit organization, World Bike for Breath. They spoke about clean air and asthma to more than 150 newspapers, magazines, and TV stations, including Time for Kids, NPR, and PBS’s Roadtrip Nation. They are the only family on record to complete a full circumnavigation of the world by bicycle.

As the past two decades of war in Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, Darfur and the Congo have revealed, war in the twenty-first century looks nothing like the traditional state-to-state conflicts of World Wars I and II which defined the previous century. Resolving today’s conflicts - typically based on complex ethnic, religious, economic and political dynamics - requires far more than mere military strength and technology. The military officer of today must simultaneously be a warrior and diplomat, combatant and humanitarian worker, soldier and peacekeeper. But how can today’s militaries prepare their leaders for such multifaceted roles?

Warriors or Peacekeepers seeks to provide answers to this question, comparing and contrasting research on the successes and failures of military cultural education and training programs in seven different countries on three continents (U.S., Canada, Argentina Norway, Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands). This anthology consists of three main sections. The first addresses the theoretical issues of developing the warrior-peacekeeper: what constitutes cultural competence in the officer profession and the pedagogical challenges associated with developing such competence. The second compares teaching practices from various military educational institutions and provides insight into such issues as: how language training can build cultural awareness, helping officers navigate the ethical and moral challenges of dealing with gender in radically different cultures and the best didactic models to develop reflective skills in military leaders. The third section examines the structural and organizational conditions which historically have aided or impeded educational and organizational change in the military. 

This book will appeal to military academic communities, educational institutions, scholars in security studies, peacekeeping and conflict studies; and to decision-makers in governments and administration.