Dana Sachs chronicles what happened in Greece when Middle Eastern refugees and volunteers from around the world converged, imperfectly, often chaotically, but with empathy and generosity in ways that mattered and ways that moved me. Sometimes these impromptu communities fail in the end, but the fact that they succeeded for a time, against the odds, can teach us important lessons.
— Rebecca Solnit, author of Hope in the Dark and Not Too Late
All Else Failed
The Unlikely Volunteers at the Heart of the Migrant Aid Crisis
In 2015, increasing numbers of refugees and migrants, most of them fleeing war-torn homelands, arrived by boat on the shores of Greece, setting off the greatest human displacement in Europe since WWII. As journalists reported horrific mass drownings, an ill-prepared and seemingly indifferent world looked on. Those who reached Europe needed food, clothing, medicine, and shelter, but the international aid system broke down completely.
All Else Failed is Dana Sachs’s compelling eyewitness account of the successes—and failures—of the volunteer relief network that emerged to meet the enormous need. Closely following the odysseys of seven individual men and women, and their families, it tells a story of despair and resilience, revealing the humanity within an immense humanitarian disaster.
Dayton Literary Peace Prize Finalist
Clara Johnson Award Finalist
Clinton Global Initiative Reading List selection (in partnership with Northshire Bookstore)
Wesleyan University Magazine “Recommended Reading” selection
Ebook
- ISBN
- 9781954276109
Paperback
- ISBN
- 9781954276093
Watch Dana Sachs discuss All Else Failed at McNally Jackson Books and hear more from her about the book on Bookstack, Chris Voss Show, Curious Man, Keen On, Leonard Lopate at Large, Stand Up! with Pete Dominick, and What Matters Most.
Go behind the scenes of the humanitarian aid effort in the All Else Failed book trailer, read the Editors’ Choice Award adapted excerpt in Scoundrel Time, and find Dana Sach’s op-eds related to migration and the book at Gateway Journalism Review, Charlotte Readers, and in the Wall Street Journal.
Dana Sachs is a journalist, novelist, and cofounder of the nonprofit Humanity Now: Direct Refugee Relief, which supports grassroots teams providing aid to displaced people. A former Fulbright Scholar, she is the author of three works of nonfiction, The House on Dream Street: Memoir of an American Woman in Vietnam; The Life We Were Given: Operation Babylift, International Adoption, and the Children of War in Vietnam; and All Else Failed: The Unlikely Volunteers at the Heart of the Migrant Aid Crisis, as well as the novels If You Lived Here and The Secret of the Nightingale Palace. Her writing has appeared in numerous publications, including the Wall Street Journal, National Geographic, and Mother Jones. Sachs lives in Wilmington, North Carolina.
visit author page »Praise for All Else Failed
An urgent, deeply researched, and tender account of the helpers: refugee crisis volunteers (often formerly displaced) who arrive when those responsible for the chaos have turned their backs. Vital, and often infuriating, it is at once global in scale and absolutely singular. This is a story about the drive to nurture and care for our fellow humans, one that stirs us all.
— Dina Nayeri, author of The Ungrateful Refugee
Dana Sachs’s vivid, passionate book will shake any faith you once had in international aid organizations. But it will move and inspire you, and bring a lump to your throat, by its portraits of big-hearted women and men from many countries who jumped in to help fellow human beings caught up in one of the worst humanitarian catastrophes of our time.
— Adam Hochschild, author of King Leopold’s Ghost and To End All Wars
A firsthand account of the unimaginable migrant crisis. . . . The book’s harrowing narrative describes the volunteer civilian heroes who rescued courageous migrant families escaping persecution, war, and dire circumstances without the help or resources from wealthy European States or international aid organizations.
— Clara Johnson Award jury citation
[Sachs] clearly conveys people’s resourcefulness and generosity as well as the size and complexity of the situation. As large numbers of people continue to leave their home countries for wealthier nations due to difficult situations, this book provides a personal look at what that entails.
— Choice
This is an up-close look at what happened, what went right, what went wrong and how we can learn from the experience. Such an important book!
— Linda Bond, Auntie’s Bookstore (Spokane, WA)