Author/Editor

Co-author of two books—Sudan, The Land and the People and Hard Lessons, The Iraq Reconstruction Experience—Victoria Butler worked as a foreign correspondent for Time Magazine, Voice of America, and NBC News in South East Asia and Africa. She has spent the last decade writing and editing reports for the U.S Congress on behalf of three federal agencies overseeing U.S. expenditures in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria. 

Victoria has witnessed first hand the vital role America has played in shaping the modern world. In her new book—a biography of Eric A. Johnston—she examines the multi-faceted life of a key architect of the “American Century.” Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas described Johnston as “one of the great men of our time” for his role in shaping the post-World War II domestic and foreign policies that produced the greatest economic expansion in U.S. history and ensured American dominance on the world stage.

Johnston’s story, particularly relevant in this polarized period, illustrates how business, government, and politicians with widely differing views worked together to create the programs and institutions—from the Council on Economic Advisors and the World Bank to the Marshall Plan, the United Nations, and NATO—that formed the foundation for American prosperity. This biography of a self-proclaimed progressive Republican, who served as President of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce during the war and then as President of the Motion Picture Association of America until his death in 1963, goes to the heart of what it means to be an American.

Born in Spokane, Washington, Victoria has lived and worked in Thailand, South Africa, Cambodia, Indonesia, Sudan, Kenya, and Haiti. Victoria and her husband, retired Ambassador Tim Carney, reside in Washington, DC, but also spend time in Spokane and northern Idaho.