Eating with the Enemy: How I Waged Peace with North Korea from My BBQ Shack in Hackensack

by Robert Egan, Kurt Pitzer Narrated by Traber Burns

Overview

Robert Egan could have been a roofing contractor, like his father. Instead, he opened a barbecue restaurant. His interest in the search for Vietnam-era POWs led to an introduction to North Korean officials desperate to improve relations with the United States. So Egan turned his restaurant into Camp David, with pork ribs.

During tumultuous years that saw the death of Kim Il Sung, the rise of Kim Jong Il, the Bush “Axis of Evil,” and North Korea's successful test of a nuclear weapon, Egan advised North Korea's deputy ambassador to the United Nations, informed for the FBI, vexed the White House, and nearly rescued a captured U.S. Navy vessel. Based on true events, this fast-paced tale shows how far one citizen can go in working for peace.

Editorial Reviews

Kirkus Reviews

International political relations are creatively managed by a New Jersey restaurant owner. In his 1992 sworn testimony, the author admitted to POW/MIA Affairs attorney John McCreary that he simply wished to "make a difference . . . to become part of the solution" in initiating positive dialogue between himself and Vietnamese political powerhouses. As the street-smart son of a blue-collar disciplinarian, Egan eschewed college for roofing work, abused cocaine and became a general troublemaker. Early on he developed an intense interest in the Vietnam War, which ended before he could enlist. Incensed by the many soldiers who remained unaccounted for by war's end, Egan brazenly contacted the Vietnamese Embassy in 1979, intent on getting answers to the missing POWs. Two years later, he opened Cubby's, a roadside barbeque restaurant that eventually became a base camp for his international-relations meetings. Vietnamese diplomats began to dine there, exchanging ideas and comparing their communist structure to America's capitalism-much to the extreme dismay of Egan's father, who notified the FBI. Believing his peacekeeping mission was fizzling, he settled into work at the restaurant, expanded the menu and moved in with his girlfriend. More than ten years after opening Cubby's, North Korean representatives visited, eager to "work together." Under the watchful eye of Feds assigned to Egan, he carefully befriended the North Koreans with New Jersey Nets tickets, catered Embassy lunches and fishing trips. Amid international political discord, a good-natured culture clash endured between Egan and North Korean deputy U.N. ambassador Han Song Ryol. While continually informing McCreary of developments,Egan and his new friends pondered nuclear-arms issues and rationalized governmental misinterpretations. The author also submitted to a truth serum-induced interrogation and endured a few nerve-wracking moments throughout both the Clinton and Bush regimes. An enlightening, and precarious, experiment in the ways opposing cultures can merge and acquiesce.

From the Publisher

Narrator Traber Burns has a down-home style that sounds like he’s sitting on his porch telling us this unique personal story.”
—AudioFile

New York Times

A jaunty narrative of one man’s sometimes self-indulgent escapades in the face of government ambivalence.”
—The New York Times

Product Details

BN ID:	2940170128631
Publisher:	HighBridge Company
Publication date:	10/25/2011
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

There was only one chair in the room. Fluorescent tubes on the ceiling hummed with blue light. The woman smiled and explained in a soothing voice that there were some “procedures” they had to go through.

“We’re just going to put you under for a few minutes,” she said. One of the officials told me to turn around..

“Do I have a choice?” I lowered my pants, exposing most of my left butt cheek.  The woman came up from behind me, and I felt a sharp prick as she pushed in the needle and rammed the solution into my muscle. When she finished, I sat down.

“Which agency do you work for? CIA?” asked the other male official.

“I operate independently,” I said. I started to feel good. Very good. I had the urge to laugh, even though nobody had said anything funny. “I’m a lone wolf. And I make burgers for a living. I’m a burger-making lone wolf.”

I must have blacked out for some of it. When I opened my eyes again, the two men were there, but the woman was gone. I wiped my nose, and my hand came away bloody. I suddenly felt so sick and dizzy I thought I’d had a stroke. “What the fuck?”

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