Living History by Unknown (best non fiction books of all time .txt) 📕

with their livestock by horse and cart and subsisted on meat, mare’s milk and other dairy products made from it, just as their ancestors had done hundreds of years before.

The backdrop of their life on the steppes was stunning in its vastness, serenity and natural beauty. The family’s young children raced on horseback, and their beautiful young mother showed me how to milk a horse. Inside the family’s ger, every square inch served a purpose. The only sign of modern technology was an old, rusty transistor radio. As is the custom of hospitality in Mongolia, I was offered a bowl of fermented mare’s milk.

I thought it tasted like warm, day-old plain yogurt, not something I’d seek out, but not so horrible that I couldn’t sip it politely. I generously offered some to the American press, all of whom declined. The next day, when one of the White House physicians who traveled with us on overseas trips―we called him Dr. Doom―found out about my culinary adventure, he ordered me to take a course of strong antibiotics to prevent a horrible livestock disease.

“Don’t you know you can get brucellosis from raw milk?” he scolded.

I was mesmerized by this place and these lives, but I was scheduled to have lunch with President Ochirbat, followed by tea with a group of women and then an address to students at the National University. We had to go.

In Ulan Bator there were no traces of indigenous Mongolian culture, as the Soviets had destroyed most of the buildings and monuments that were uniquely Mongolian and replaced them with sterile, Stalinist-era structures. The people had been forbidden even to speak the name of Genghis Khan, the leader who ruled the vast thirteenth-century Mongolian empire. As we drove into Ulan Bator, people stood ten deep on the sidewalk to watch with curiosity as our cars went by. They didn’t wave or call out, as crowds do in many countries; respect was offered quietly. I appreciated the extraordinary turnout generated for an American dignitary, although I later learned that our convoy of cars was as much an attraction as I was.

After every paragraph of my speech at the university, I had to pause while my words were translated into Mongolian. I spoke of the courage of the Mongolian people and their leadership, urging them to continue their struggle toward democracy. Winston Lord had come up with the idea that Mongolia should be held as an example for anyone doubting democracy’s ability to take root in unlikely places. And Lissa introduced a refrain: “Let them come to Mongolia!” From then on, whenever we visited a country that was struggling to become democratic, we would break into a chorus of. “Let them come to Mongolia!”

And so they should.

Flying home, I thought about how many of the women I had met seemed to identify with my challenges and with each other’s, giving me a deep sense of connection and solidarity with women the world over. I may have gotten the headlines on this trip, but it was the women I had met whose lives and achievements against great odds deserved the world’s respect. They sure had mine.

SHUTDOWN

I returned from Asia in time to get Chelsea settled into school. Although she still indulged my maternal impulse to help her, she was a fifteen-year-old and eager to test her independence. I gave in when she pleaded to be allowed to ride with her friends, instead of always trailing behind in a car driven by the Secret Service. I wanted her to live like a typical teenager, though we both knew her situation was anything but typical. Despite the obvious differences that living in the White House presented, her life revolved around friends, school, church and ballet. Five days a week, after school, she took a couple of hours of lessons at the Washington School of Ballet, then returned to the White House to face the mountain of homework assigned to juniors as they ramped up for the college applications process ahead. Chelsea no longer needed nor always welcomed my hovering presence, so I had time to immerse myself in finishing my book It Takes a Village. I had to put in long hours writing and enlist help to make my deadline of Thanksgiving.

I was planning to go to Latin America in October for the first time to attend the annual meeting of the First Ladies of the Western Hemisphere. Bill and I had hosted a Summit of the Americas in Miami in December 1994, which had given us the opportunity to meet all the Hemisphere’s leaders and their spouses. Bill was determined that the U.S. play a positive role in promoting democratic values in the area, since every country―

with the exception of Cuba―was now a democracy.

This was good news for the people of the region and for the United States, but our government needed to help our neighbors make progress in improving their economies, alleviating poverty, decreasing illiteracy and improving health care. The end of internal conflicts and the promise of expanded trade and investment opportunities could raise the standard of living and might someday lead to a Hemispheric alliance from the Canadian arctic to the southern tip of Argentina. But a tremendous amount of work had to be done to create the possibility of such prosperity.

On this trip, however, I was heading south to visit U.S. development programs that were assisting women and children, whose status directly reflects a nation’s economic and political progress. I was eager for the opportunity to work with my counterparts to develop and implement a common agenda to eradicate measles and reduce maternal mortality rates throughout the Hemisphere. In the past, American policy in the region led to the funneling of foreign aid to military juntas that opposed communism and socialism but sometimes repressed their own citizens. Successive American governments supported regimes that committed human rights violations against people from El Salvador to Chile.

The Clinton Administration hoped to make it clear that the days of the U.S. ignoring such