Don Gregg spent thirty-one years as an operations officer in CIA and ten years in the White House under Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and George H. W. Bush. Pot Shards is his memoir. It tells of a philosophy graduate in 1951 who immediately joined the CIA when told, “You’ll jump out of airplanes and save the world!” His book is a window...
Son of an international oilman and a Polish émigré, Grove grew up largely in prewar Europe: in Nazi Germany, Holland, and Spain. He recounts his friendship with William Faulkner during undergraduate days at Bard College, his Navy service during the Korean War, and his 35-year diplomatic career in Africa, Europe,...
In Slovakia on the Road, Paul Hacker tells of volatile political changes and intrigues; administrative challenges of operating a small diplomatic outpost in Bratislava and its dependence on the embassy in Prague; Slovak-Czech and Slovak-Hungarian minority tensions; the legacy of the Holocaust; the final move to independence; and post independence Slovakian...
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,...
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...