Dick Parker was renowned in the State Department for his dry acerbic wit. From his early youth on U.S. Cavalry posts across the Southwest to his World War II experiences, through a successful Foreign Service career as a leading Arabist in the Near East, he observed and commented on everything.
In this autobiography...
In Uncle Sam in Barbary, Richard Parker tells the story of the young American republic’s first hostage crisis, and earliest encounter with Islam, which began in 1785 when Algerine corsairs–the Barbary pirates–captured two U.S. vessels off the coast of Portugal. The situation dragged on until 1796, when the United States paid...
This often surprising book shares firsthand accounts and frank discussions from a meeting held in October 1998 on the twenty-fifth anniversary of Egypt and Syria’s attack on Israeli army positions in the Sinai and Golan. Twenty-five scholars and senior officials, former and current, searched for answers to persistent questions about...
For much of the early 1990s, Haiti held the world’s attention. A fiery populist priest, Jean Bertrand Aristide, was elected president and deposed a year later in a military coup. Soon thousands of poor Haitians started to arrive in makeshift boats on the shores of Florida. In early 1993, the...
Stabilizing Fragile States: Why It Matters and What to Do About It is a masterclass on intervening to help fragile states stabilize in the face of internal challenges that threaten national security and how the United States can do better at less cost with improved chances of success. Written from the...
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...
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...