Travels Of An Iconoclast

About the Book

Travel is eye-opening, educational, and sometimes mind blowing!  At best, travel experiences question everything you thought was sacred; challenges many “facts” you thought represented truth; makes you self-examine many of your personal values, and confronts head on the bullshit you’ve been fed by our politicians, the media, and American corporate interests.

Vanuatu is NOT like it was shown on the American TV show, the Survivors: Vanuatu. The Philippines is NOT the happy little democracy we organized for them in 50 years of exploitative colonial rule.  Sri Lanka is NOT contented tea pickers in brightly colored sarongs. Nor is Malaysia a sleepy little third world country of a few rubber plantations left by the British.

Instead, we find Panamanians never signed any agreement to let us build a canal through their country; that the world’s biggest democracy, India, is residing in rotting buildings left by the British ‘raj’; that the two Middle Eastern countries with the least trouble and the greatest progress are ruled by total autocrats; that Tongans view American sports as “selfish” and laugh at our “motivational courses”; that many Alaskan natives owned slaves four decades after the Emancipation Proclamation;  and that Santa Claus prefers a pint of gin rather than a glass of milk in New Zealand.

The author, an award-winning college professor of psychology who loves to travel, is witty, insightful, and optimistic - yet, as he says, an iconoclast!

About the Author

            Dr. Harve E. Rawson, a research scientist for Project Apollo, a psychology professor at Hanover College for 32 years, director of a children’s therapeutic center, a Fulbright Scholar in Bahrain, a dean of faculty at Franklin College, a radio broadcaster, a cruise ship port lecturer, and an author of six books, has traveled to over 150 countries to date. 

            In this book, the widely-traveled American scholar and psychologist focuses on some intriguing places that best illuminate emerging global problems, how those problems developed, and how the people there are coping with those problems. The author is adamant in his belief that Americans must be more knowledgeable of places beyond our borders if we are ever going to deal with world problems effectively and that we are often rightfully accused of being ignorant, arrogant, and condescending in relating with our global neighbors.

            Toward that end, the book emphasizes each selected place’s fascinating historical precedents, its previous interactions with the United States, its unique psychology, and its coping strategies in dealing with their problems,

            Professor Rawson is married with two sons, three grandchildren, and currently resides in the historic town of Madison, Indiana.