A City Named Victory-Liberty Where Neither Exists, Yet
Whitney Terrell is a writer-in-residence at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. His first novel, The Huntsman (Viking) appeared in 2001 and was selected as a notable book of the year by The New York Times. It was also selected as one of the best books of that year by The Kansas City Star and The St. Louis Post-Dispatch. His second novel, The King of Kings County (Viking) was selected as a best book of 2005 by the Christian Science Monitor and The Kansas City Star. In a recent review, The Washington Post said that its story of real estate and race will “put Kansas City on the literary map with Anne Tyler’s Baltimore and William Kennedy’s Albany.” Terrell is the recipient of a James A. Michener-Copernicus Society Award. He was born and raised in Kansas City. He is a graduate of Princeton University and has an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.
CAMP VICTORY, IRAQ ‑ Amid the billions in cost overruns, embezzlement, fraud, and uncompleted contracts that have plagued the reconstruction effort in Iraq, the engineers of the U.S. Army 17th Field Artillery Brigade have quietly been assembling one project that actually works: the $200-million Victory-Liberty Base complex. The complex, located just to the west of Baghdad International Airport, covers an area equal to Independence, Missouri. Unlike the rest of Iraq, the electricity runs, the trash gets collected, the roads are graded and paved and best of all, according to Cpt. Derek Wischmann, the utilities chief for the Directorate of Public Works, it may someday actually be part of Iraq.