Emergency Sex and Other Desperate Measures

I love those books where after the first chapter you're so hooked you start measuring time in terms of how many more pages you can fit in before you have to do something (leave for work/do the washing/go to the gym/get out of your PJs before 3pm, that kind of thing). 'Emergency sex...' is one such book which stole every useful bone in my body for 24 hours, or thereabouts.

Written by three UN workers who spent the 1990's in some of the most terrifying places on the planet, especially if you were their parents, it's an absolute privilege to follow their individual experiences. With the right mix of earnestness, humour, and disillusionment I became enthralled and appalled in equal measures at the capacity of mankind to be at once stunningly cruel and redeemingly selfless.

Taking readers into the prisons and morgues of Haiti (how often one led to the other), mass graves of Srebrenica and Rwanda, disaster that was Operation Restore Hope in Somalia is challenging, and the first elections after the end of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia is brave. And necessary, I think, if we want to make lasting changes in the world.

A brilliant read which has left me even more assured that I'm doing not only the right thing, but the only thing I can do by giving up my day job.