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Practicing Public Diplomacy: A Cold War Odyssey
“It is sometimes said that soft power helped to win the Cold War. To find out what it was like to be on the front lines of these battles, read this fascinating memoir.”
JOSEPH S. NYE, Harvard University
Yale Richmond’s latest book, Practicing Public Diplomacy: A Cold War Odyssey, published by Berghahn Books of Oxford and New York, is the thirty-second volume in the ADST-DACOR Diplomats and Diplomacy Series. In it Richmond details the doings of a U.S. Foreign Service cultural affairs officer in five Cold War hot spots — Germany, Laos, Poland, Austria, and the Soviet Union — and in Washington with the State Department, the Helsinki Commission of the U.S. Congress, and the National Endowment for Democracy.
Part history, part memoir, the book takes readers into the trenches of the Cold War and demonstrates what public diplomacy — communicating directly with the people of other countries — can accomplish, providing examples of what could be done today in countries where anti-Americanism runs high.
Yale Richmond has forty years of “hands on” experience in international affairs as a Foreign Service officer, congressional staffer, and foundation program officer. His major work experience has been cultural, educational, information, and scientific exchanges with the Soviet Union and the countries of Eastern Europe, with which he negotiated fourteen intergovernmental agreements. In retirement he has devoted himself to writing and public speaking. He is the author of numerous magazine and newspaper articles and eight books, one of which, From Nyet to Da: Understanding the Russians, published in a 4th edition, sold more than 30,000 copies and has been translated into Chinese and Korean editions. Two other Yale Richmond books have also appeared in Chinese-language editions.
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