Overview

In 1982, amid the nuclear paranoia that engulfed the US and the Soviet Union, Samantha Smith, a fifth grader from Manchester, Maine, wrote a letter to the Kremlin asking the Soviet leader if he was going to start a war. When Pravda, the biggest Soviet newspaper, published her letter--and Samantha received an unprecedented invitation to visit the Soviet Union --her family embarked on a historic journey. The story of a young American girl's letter to the Soviet leader and her innocent curiosity about the other side of the Iron Curtain holds an important lesson for every American. America's Youngest Ambassador provides insights into a forgotten era and has an important message for young people who strive to be more involved in facilitating change, both locally and worldwide. Juxtaposing Samantha's narrative with that of her own childhood in the Soviet Union in the 1980s, Lena Nelson explores the consequences of government propaganda on both sides of the ocean and reveals how Samantha Smith's journey in the summer of 1983 helped melt the hearts of the Soviets and thaw the ice of the Cold War. Drawing on interviews conducted in both the US and Russia with key players in the events of those days, Nelson blends storytelling, anecdotes, and analysis of Soviet-American relations to tell the story of this unprecedented moment in history.

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Lena Nelson is a writer, teacher, and citizen historian who has spent the past seventeen years researching and documenting the story of Samantha Smith and creating the online archive of news articles and videos about Samantha Smith. She was a nominee for the Allegra Johnson Prize and has worked with numerous news, educational, and humanitarian organizations around the world. She has degrees in international studies and linguistics; and lives with her family in Southern California. Christa Lewis and her pseudonym Pippa Jayne have narrated 265 audiobooks between them. Christa is a conservatory trained actor with a smart and funny vibe who can also meet the moment in nonfiction thanks to a seventeen-year stint as a newsreader. Christa speaks accent-free German fluently and offers a variety of accents and dialects. Magically, there have been eight AudioFile Earphones Awards in nonfiction/biography and memoir, YA, and fiction-as well as a SOVAS Voice Arts Award, a Sultry Listeners Award, a Listeners Choice Award, and two Audie nominations.

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