Night on Earth

Book excerpt: "This book tells the story of American and European humanitarian institutions that provided food, shelter, clothing, and basic medical aid to distressed civilian populations in the Near East during the interwar years. It uncovers the untold tale of their ambition to go beyond relief, to rehabilitate and reconstruct a 'new' Near East. Wherever these humanitarian institutions operated, they imagined a prosperous, peaceful future enhanced by their shortterm relief actions and improved by their agricultural, educational, public health rehabilitative programs. Yet like a cloud, humanitarian aid was an intense but ephemeral phenomenon that - despite the ambitions of its protagonists - failed to leave a permanent trace"--