Since September 11, 2001, U.S. public diplomacy has come under increased scrutiny along with renewed debate about its necessity. Until 1999, the United States Information Agency (USIA) was responsible for what is now called “public diplomacy,” conducting media, cultural, and educational exchange programs. Nine Lives recounts successful public diplomacy programs...
The fifty-seven short essays in this book set the scene for the difficulties that now threaten Egypt. They were written during 1990–1995 while Lillian Harris, a former American Foreign Service officer married to Alan Goulty, a British diplomat, lived in Cairo.
The essays explore Egypt’s cities, deserts, societies, monasteries, and...
Hart’s three tours of duty in Saudi Arabia, the last as ambassador from 1961 to 1965, gave him a unique appreciation of that desert kingdom’s culture and people. Helping forge the critical U.S.-Saudi security partnership, a relationship that remains to this day a key aspect of U.S. diplomacy, engaged all...
Judy Heimann entered the diplomatic life in 1958 to join her husband, John, in Jakarta at his American Embassy post, setting her on a path across the continents as she mastered the fine points of diplomatic culture. Drawn from memories of fifty years of life in the U.S. Foreign Service...
During a 37-year Foreign Service career, Terry McNamara had three postings in Vietnam—as provincial adviser with the CORDS program, first principal officer in Danang, and consul general in Can Tho. Escape with Honor tells the true story of then–Consul General McNamara’s harrowing evacuation from Can Tho down the Mekong River by boat,...
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...
This history, twenty years in the research and writing, relates the story of Americans living in Kuwait, beginning with the establishment of the American Mission Hospital in 1911. It covers the first century of community experience ending in 2011, which is also the fiftieth anniversary of Kuwait's emergence as an...
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...
This book is an account of the author's sometimes comical, sometimes frustrating, but always enlightening adventures as a diplomat in seven countries. As a former academic who had worked and traveled in some sixty countries of the world before joining the Foreign Service, Huffman provides trenchant commentary on the history,...