Conservative. That’s the word David Korten uses to describe his upbringing. He grew up in the forties and fifties in the Pacific Northwest town of Longview, Washington, where his father owned a music-and-appliance store. In college Korten became active in the Young Republicans and planned, upon graduation, to return home and run the family business. “I had little interest in travel,” he writes, “beyond visiting the mountains and nearby seashore . . . and found it a bit odd that anyone blessed with U.S. citizenship would want to venture beyond our national borders.”