Based on over forty years' consideration of Vietnam's history, the author aims (a) to put the Vietnam War within the context of Vietnam's overall history; (b) to examine the historical interaction of the United States and Vietnam in war and peace; (c) to understand U.S. and Vietnamese policies and perceptions...
It is estimated that one-third to one-half of the women married to U.S. Foreign Service officers are foreign-born. In Foreign at Home and Away, Australian-born author Margaret Bender has drawn on her own twenty-five years’ experience as a Foreign Service wife and on extensive interviews she conducted with forty women from...
John Boykin’s fast-paced life of the extraordinary diplomat Philip Habib zeroes in on Habib’s excruciatingly difficult, much lauded, but short-lived success in halting the Arab-Israeli war in Lebanon in 1982 and negotiating the evacuation of PLO leader Yasir Arafat and his PLO fighters. Twenty years later, Arafat and Ariel Sharon,...
Donn Piatt (1819–1891) was a celebrated diplomat, historian, journalist, judge, lawyer, legislator, lobbyist, novelist, playwright, poet, well-known humorist, and consummate Washington insider. Having served as an American diplomat in France in the 1850s, he had a strong and influential interest in foreign affairs. After the Civil War, Piatt became famous...
In Toussaint’s Clause: The Founding Fathers and the Haitian Revolution, former ambassador Gordon Brown relates how America’s early leaders and their diplomatic representatives dealt with the politically sensitive issue of the 1790–1810 slave rebellion in Haiti led by Toussaint L’Ouverture. Founding fathers George Washington, John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, and...
Veteran RFE insider J. F. Brown’s story of the critical role Radio Free Europe played during the Cold War is the 53rd volume in the ADST-DACOR Diplomats and Diplomacy Series. Brown, a widely recognized expert on Eastern Europe who served as RFE director in 1978–83, offers a balanced and penetrating analysis...
Thompson Buchanan's memoir describes the challenges facing a Foreign Service political officer during the Cold War in a career focused primarily on the Soviet Union and Africa. Born in 1924, Thompson Buchanan joined the State Department in 1948 as an intelligence analyst on the Soviet Union. In the Foreign Service...
In this personal, multifaceted memoir, Hala Buck, a professional artist and integrative therapist, reflects on her mixed Muslim and Christian family, her marriage to an American diplomat, their nomadic life between the Arab World and North America, raising a “Third Culture” daughter, and navigating cultures. Buck’s story finds her as...
On August 7, 1998, three years before President George W. Bush declared the War on Terror, the radical Islamist group al-Qaeda bombed the American embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, where Prudence Bushnell was serving as U.S. ambassador. Terrorism, Betrayal, and Resilience is her account of what happened, how it happened, and...
John Chapman “Chips” Chester offers up an often whimsical but highly informative memoir of an active life in international affairs. His exploits cover U.S. Army service in occupied Germany; a career in the U.S. Foreign Service in Germany, Croatia, Malawi, and the State Department; and a second career on Capitol...