Edwin P. McClain spent the better part of two decades working in humanitarian operations in some of the world’s most difficult environments — among them Southeast Asia, Iraq, the former Yugoslavia, Russia and Kenya. He worked in logistics, coordination, and field management during periods of active conflict and in the long, unglamorous aftermath that follows when the cameras move on.

Those years left him with a deep respect for the people who do this work and an abiding skepticism about the stories told about it — including his own. His memoir, Confidence of Memory, is an attempt to set down an honest account: not a heroic one, but a true one, insofar as memory and conscience will allow.

McClain is also co-author, with W. R. Hyde, of Cascades of History: How Small Decisions Shape Civilizations (Royal Whisper Press, 2026) — a collection of thirty-eight historical vignettes examining the turning points on which the modern world balanced, and the alternate paths that nearly were. He lives in Penang, Malaysia.