Deane Hinton’s memoir presents a reliable firsthand account of the development of U.S. strategic economic policy and the new institutions that became the framework for trade, aid, economic growth, and monetary policy. Hinton was one of a handful of experts on these issues to serve in high policy positions throughout...
Former assistant secretary of state for East Asia and the Pacific John H. Holdridge was intimately involved in the historic events surrounding the establishment of relations between the United States and the People’s Republic of China. With responsibility for East Asia on the National Security Council staff in 1969–73, he...
As one of those taken hostage by Congolese rebels at the U.S. Consulate he headed in Stanleyville (now Kisangani), Michael Hoyt provides the first inside account of the 1964 seizure of the American consulate staff and their 111 days of captivity. Their struggle to stay alive and their dramatic rescue...
Since its inception, al Qaeda has aspired to create a safe haven in Yemen, where it has operated against U.S. and Yemeni interests. From 2001 to 2004, when Edmund Hull was U.S. ambassador to Yemen, U.S. and Yemeni counterterrorism efforts successfully seized the initiative against al Qaeda, severely degrading its...
By 1990, as the state-controlled Algerian economy careened toward the brink of bankruptcy, its government began to turn away from one-party rule and toward democracy. But after the government canceled an election that Islamist parties were poised to win, the ensuing Islamist insurgency killed as many as 100,000 and threatened...
A detailed chronicle of the working life of an idealistic, action-oriented World War II veteran’s lifelong search for peace through strengthening democracies and the international institutions that unite them.
A memoir of dramatic moments in recent history. On June 4, 1989, Joanne Grady Huskey was in Tiananmen Square and witnessed the horror of a government attacking its own people. On August 7, 1998, she was in the basement of the American Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, with her two small...
Dick Jackson captures the humor and sheer incongruity of working across cultures in an international career spanning diplomacy and education. Written in a lighthearted tone, his memoir also delves into tragic consequences in countries such as Somalia, Libya, and Greece. The author uses wit and anecdote to chronicle the monumental...
Cold War Saga gives an insider’s view of the global confrontation between the Soviet Union and the United States and its allies. The author, veteran diplomat Kempton Jenkins, was directly involved in this epic struggle from its beginning in 1950 through 1980.
The way in which people become ambassadors of the United States is the result of time––honored traditions and, in some cases, a thinly veiled form of political corruption. Former U.S. ambassador Dennis Jett’s American Ambassadors explains where ambassadors come from, what they do, where they go, and why they still...