Smokin' Doc Thurston

The memoirs of Dr. H. David Thurston, a retired plant pathology professor at Cornell University. After recounting his youth and army days, Thurston writes about his two stints in Bogotá, Colombia, working for the Rockefeller Foundation, the first from 1954-1956, the second from 1958-1967. After the Rockefeller Foundation, Thurston assumed a professorship of plant pathology at Cornell University, where he helped establish and nourish Cornell's graduate level course on International Agriculture. The course consisted of several professors accompanied by a group of students on a trip to the tropics, where the students were able to experience international agriculture first hand. Over the course of 17 years, the group visited Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Costa Rica and the Honduras. Thurston was the trip leader for the Mexico years. Many entertaining stories, as well as insight into tropical agriculture, are documented here. He devotes a chapter to his sabbatical in Córdoba, Spain, in 1990.