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In this engaging memoir, author Zeid shows connections between decisions made early in his life and their extraordinary outcomes. He was in his last year of secondary school when Great Britain entered World War II. He forewent the university education offered to him and instead trained as a pilot in the Royal Air Force. That opportunity could never have come to fruition had he not refused to wear glasses when they were prescribed for him in his teens. Service in the RAF took him to America, India, Burma, and other exotic locales. Much of his long life experience was built on such decisions, leading to his living in British Malaya, working in increasingly significant positions in the rubber plantations, and even meeting Queen Elizabeth. Other decisions made along the way resulted in the avoidance of enemy attacks and other catastrophes, meeting the woman who would become his wife of fifty years, and then retiring to Australia to enjoy a family farm.
Vividly describing experiences that many would envy—world travel, danger, romance, and success based on his professional acumen—Zeid has constructed an entertaining history with wise, often amusing observations about culture, language, warfare, and domestic bliss. His memories reveal someone concerned not only with business but also with social equality and care for the less privileged. He had a natural zest for raucous antics as a youth but later acquired a mature intuition that allowed him to improve the companies he worked for and predict certain events not readily apparent to others, such as, in one case, an impending revolution. As his title suggests, the author realizes that we can’t know the future, but looking back, we can sometimes see the road we took to get from there to here.
RECOMMENDED by the US Review