"This ispiring biography is a tribute to Hebben's achievements..." —Foreign Service Journal

About the Book

 This is the story of a remarkable American who led a storybook life in the early 20th century. His name was Paxton Hibben (a distant relative of the author), who was raised in a well-to-do Midwestern family, earned degrees from Princeton and Harvard, and set forth in 1905 to take on the world. He began with seven years as a career diplomat, followed by a brief fling in politics, and then found his true vocation as a journalist, beginning as a war correspondent in World War I. Hibben was a romantic who thrived on adventure and intrigue, and seemed to find both wherever he went. He also became a political radical, at a time when this was distinctly unpopular. His crowning achievement was the humanitarian effort he organized to rescue starving children in the terrible Russian famine of 1921-23. This cost him dearly among his countrymen, most of whom turned their backs on the Soviet Union and its starving citizens. The Russians were puzzled about this “astonishing American,” but were deeply grateful to him, and honored him in his final adventure, a hero's burial in Moscow. A biography of Paxton Hibben represented a twofold challenge: His widow destroyed almost all personal records, and he was a black sheep among the other Hibben relatives who knew him, all of whom were deceased prior to writing. It has taken the author over fifteen years to piece together the account found in this book.