The Importance of Being from Oshkosh: Looking Back at the Great Depression, World War II and the Cold War Years

Growing up in a depression-wracked small Wisconsin city, John Livingstone, craving adventure, escaped to the outside world by enlisting in the U.S. Army. He became "a tiny cog in a well-oiled killing machine," General Patton's Third Army. At war's end in Europe he faced another set of adversaries: deserters and black marketeers as an army criminal investigations agent in London and Paris. Three tumultuous years followed at the University of Wisconsin, culminating in a B.A. in International Relations and an invitation to join the Central Intelligence Agency in June, 1950. After a year-long bout with the Polish language at Presidio of Monterey, California, Livingstone served as an intelligence officer in Central Europe. In 1954 he returned to civilian life and established a photography and public relations business in Carmel. In 1967 he earned a master's degree in Spanish Literature at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Residence and travel in Europe from 1969 on enabled him to amass an extensive collection of documentary photos of the life and times of the people of Europe, resulting in a retrospective exhibition, "Fifty Years Behind the Lens" which included prize-winning prints previously exhibited at the Smithsonian Institution and the Pentagon. A pictorial book captioned in five languages, Carmel by Itself - Portrait of a Unique American Community by John Livingstone was published in 1982. Livingstone is presently completing a manuscript for a book entitled Katyusha and Grisha, the Liaison of Catherine the Great and Potemkin.