"Be a traveler, not a tourist"

Issue 18: How travel and identity intersect; keys to living a good life; conformity among Supreme Court justices; and a starred review from Publisher's Weekly for 'The Power of Us'

Seaside in New England, Dom tossed aside the intellectual tome¹ he had deluded himself into thinking he would read on vacation and reached for something more exhilarating. The book that came to hand, battered and abandoned by a previous guest, bore the bracing title, 'Assignment in Brittany'.

Written in 1942 by Scottish adventure novelist Helen MacInnes, 'Assignment in Brittany' tells the sort of yarn we would have loved at the age of twelve. Lion-hearted British secret service agent Martin Hearn parachutes into Nazi-occupied France on a mission to monitor the German invaders and aid the French resistance. For cover, he is impersonating a wounded French soldier convalescing in England to whom he bears an uncanny physical resemblance. Amazingly, Hearn's knowledge of the region is so deep and his ability to speak the language is so skilled that he convinces even the Frenchman's own mother and fiancée into believing he is the man himself!

Eventually, of course, a plot twist gives the game …