8The author came to realize an understanding of culture is elemental to success and achievement. By chronicling and attempting to lend some understanding to cultural disparities, the book will offer insights and practical solutions to the cultural challenges that can seem so complex and can make worldwide endeavors so daunting. The lessons learned over thirty-five years of globetrotting are not to be found in college or business schools, yet they can help serve as an indispensable guide to achievement in any endeavor. These lessons are as critical for those selling computers in Europe or Asia, politicians attempting to impact world events, international lawyers trying to guide their clients, peacekeepers operating around the globe, or practically anyone pursuing any global activity. In today's multicultural and racially diverse tapestry across the United States, these simple lessons can also pay big dividends right here. All cultures, whether those of countries, tribes, or organizations, around the world possess a pyramid of values. The descending order of values, from the most cherished to those less so, on those pyramids affects perceptions, actions, logic, legal frameworks, and even danger very differently. It is in the interaction between cultures, when values are not aligned on the respective pyramids, that misunderstandings, harsh judgement, and real problems develop.Against the backdrop of thrity years of globetrotting, the book will demonstrate how lessons in culture, with the intrinsic components of logic, face, communications, accommodation, and law, can be instrumental to understanding, and hence successfully accomplishing undertakings across our often perilous and risky world. Intertwined with these cultural components are lessons in negotiation, problem solving, and the practicalities of international travel. These concepts demonstrate how critical the application of simple rules can be to accomplishment. Lastly, this book hopes to establish how essential developing and trusting intuition can be to assisting decision making and planning--as much of everyday thinking, feeling, and acting operate outside conscious awareness. It will be evident that the application of these lessons can be the difference between sweet success and bitter failure in global pursuits-no matter the endeavor.To appreciate how the lessons were garnered and formed, and how important they have been, the author starts at the beginning of his adventures in "the mud," the "Third World" or "developing nations," as political correctness came to dictate. Beginning in the sands of the Arabian Peninsula in the early 1980s the journey winds from Saudi Arabia across the Middle East, throughout Africa and Asia, into Russia and the new republics formed after the fall of the former Soviet Union. Then, following the history-altering events of September 11, 2001, the author encounters the most extreme and dangerous situations in the ancient lands of Afghanistan and Iraq. Following almost a decade of preoccupation in these insurgency torn regions, a hunch would takes him circling back to India, throughout Africa, and into China chasing new undertakings.The continual encounters with culturally rooted lies, bribes, and peril presented regular blows of varying degrees of anguish and often a bit of humor.