In “Broadway in Benghazi: Comedy, Tragedy, and Diplomatic Drama in Gaddafi’s Libya,” author Anna Marie Linvill says of military life, “Every time you move, it is as if you have died and been reincarnated somewhere else. You spend a year or two, or if you’re lucky, maybe three in one place … suddenly, you are raptured away to a new universe where the rules have changed, but you have not. You are forced to adapt or go mad.” Linvill’s memoir is certainly about adaptation, especially to life in Libya when her Army husband was assigned to be defense attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli in 2008. It is sometimes about madness, like the anarchy that followed Gaddafi’s fall, and the deaths of Americans at Benghazi, friends and colleagues of the author and her husband. There’s even some reincarnation as Linvill discovers new life with each transition. Above all, it’s the story of individuals, Linvill and a varied cast of real-life characters whose lives intersect her own and whose stories she tells skillfully. For this and for its front-row perspective of historic events, this book is hard to put down.
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