CHASING CHAOS

WELCOME BACK TO CIVILIZATION chronicles Jessica Alexander's journey from a naïve and idealistic humanitarian aid intern working in post-genocide Rwanda to managing a 24,000-person refugee camp in North Darfur, working in tsunami-ravaged South East Asia, helping child soldiers in West Africa, and ending up a cynical senior manager in a frenzied post-earthquake Haiti and a flooded Pakistan.

WELCOME BACK TO CIVILIZATION is an honest and irreverent memoir with an international cast of characters that sheds light on why people do aid work, the alcoholic parties and fleeting romances, the burn outs and cynicism, and the constantly changing life plans and priorities. WELCOME BACK TO CIVILIZATION is not a sentimental perspective on humanitarian aid; it's a complex portrait of an aid activist on the ground, a hard insider look at what works and what doesn't in the world's most desperate and tense regions.