China Boys offers a close-up view of the U.S. opening to China and the pioneer days in U.S.-China relations that followed. Former ambassador and Asia Society president Nicholas Platt recounts the preparations and interplay surrounding the historic Nixon visit to China in 1972, the setting up of America’s first resident diplomatic...
François de Callières is the author of “On Negotiating with Sovereigns,” an iconic work on diplomacy that has rarely if ever been out of print in English translation since first published in 1716. But Callières, who lived 1645–1717, was more than the author of a single book. From modest provincial...
U.S. intelligence specialist James Potts tells the story of how covert French military aid changed the course of history by enabling the rebellious Americans to hold off the forces of Britain’s King George III, most notably in the pivotal battle of Saratoga in October 1777. Potts probes the actions of...
Eye on the World is the autobiography of diplomat Anthony C. E. Quainton, the story of a long and varied life lived in eleven countries on six continents. Rather than a formal history, this is Quainton’s reflection on his interactions with the events of those times, beginning with George VI’s...
As the initial US observer, David Rawson participated in the 1993 Rwandan peace talks at Arusha, Tanzania. Later, he served as US ambassador to Rwanda during the last months of the doomed effort to make them hold. Despite the intervention of concerned states in establishing a peace process and the...
In a lively, personal style with self-deprecating humor, John Richardson traces the evolution of his worldview from his prep school days and service as a World War II paratrooper through a lifetime in pursuit of a better world. After starting as a lawyer (Sullivan & Cromwell) and investment banker (Paine...
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...
Lu Rudel describes his unique experiences with U.S. economic aid programs during some of the most dramatic international events since World War II. These include Iran after the fall of Mosaddegh (1956–1960); Turkey after the military coup of 1960 and continuing to the start of the Cuban Missile crisis; India...
Dr. Robin Renee Sanders, having lived in Africa for several years, was always struck by the ancestral, socio-historical and educational aspects of certain African cultural practices, especially languages, artifacts, and sign and symbol systems from the Ovahimba in Namibia and Pygmies in Congo, to the Horom, Hausa, Igbo, Yoruba, and...
Ambassador (Dr.) Robin Renee Sanders’ new book on The Rise of Africa’s Small & Medium Size Enterprises (SMEs) is an insightful examination of the dramatic shift in the development paradigm for Sub Saharan Africa — driven in large part by the imaginative, innovative, and insta-impact leadership of the region’s small...