Max Alexander is an author, journalist, onetime farmer and failed politician. His latest book, "Bright Lights, No City," chronicles a three-year adventure in the West African country of Ghana, where his entrepreneur brother has launched a new for-profit business called Burro that provides innovative goods and services to low-income customers.Alexander is a former senior editor at People magazine in New York and, before that, the executive editor of Variety and Daily Variety, the showbiz trade publications, in Los Angeles. His writing--on topics ranging from crime to adventure--appears in dozens of publications including Smithsonian, Saveur, Prevention, This Old House and The New York Times. In addition, Alexander has edited books by such notable authors as George Plimpton and film critic David Thomson. He is currently working on a book about China. He lives with his wife and two sons in an 1816 center-chimney Cape in midcoast Maine.