"A beautiful amalgam of memoir, travelogue, and investigative report that moves with the propulsive forward energy of a thriller. 'What We Inherit' is a haunting chronicle of loss and redemption and an irresistibly good read. You won't be able to put it down."

"Part memoir, part investigative journalism, and completely engrossing, 'What We Inherit' is not a book you'll be forgetting anytime soon.”

I had the honor of addressing the United Nations for the International Day for Mine Awareness and Assistance in Mine Action: "What I want my sons to know is something that my family has spent generations trying to understand: You cannot allow secrets or shame about the past to prevent you from doing the right thing in the present. As an American, I'm proud the the U.S. is the largest funder of global demining efforts. But I also know that cleaning up is simply not enough. We need to take bold action and ban landmines and cluster bombs from our arsenal to prevent future atrocities."

Growing up, all Jessica Pearce Rotondi ’07 knew about her Uncle Jack was that he was MIA in the Vietnam War. “My mother wanted to protect me and my sister from what really happened,” she says.

But once her mother died of cancer in 2009, Rotondi unearthed among her belongings a vast trove of declassified CIA documents, letters, and maps revealing a more complicated story: Her uncle’s plane had gone down over Laos amid the U.S.’s secret anti-Communist bombing campaign against the neutral country—a devastating offensive that, says Rotondi, “was the start of a more militarized CIA.”