Incidentally

This is, incidentally, a surprisingly good read. In an episodic account of a full and unusual life, Jane Casey Hughes has given us (or the reader) a breezy and entertaining summary of her adventures at home and abroad.

Born into a Congressional family and growing up with gifted siblings, Jane was educated in Washington area schools with student years in Switzerland and France. She graduated from Wellesley in 1960, majoring in French.

In a lengthy professional career as a reporter and scriptwriter, author, and commentator for the Voice of America, Jane enjoyed exotic assignments from Las Vegas to Beijing. In Princeton, New Jersey, in the 1960's, she also ran a weekly radio program on women's issues.

Discreetly written, Jane covers the discomforting dissolution of her first marriage and the continuing success of her second.

Jane's first marriage to a Peruvian economist and Prime Minister led to glamorous official life in Lima but also to post-coup official trauma and eventually personal trauma as well.

Meanwhile there are charming anecdotes of Jane's contacts with celebrities ranging from royal Europeans to the Aga Khan, Ronald Reagan, and Henry Kissinger. There are glimpses of Sandra Day O'Connor, Edward R. Murrow, and
Tom Lehrer as well.