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...
When the Soviet Union ceased to exist, the United States was tasked with establishing diplomatic relations with the newly independent successor republics and creating an embassy in each new capital. In this book, the first U.S. ambassador to Tashkent, Henry Clarke, explains the logistical challenges of accomplishing that goal in...
The Lady of Silk and Steel, From Everest to Embassies tells the rags to riches story of a woman who grew up in nearly destitute circumstances on a small California farm to live in Elizabeth Taylor s former penthouse on the Potomac. A graduate of Stanford University, Sue Cobb became...
As the Cold War wound down in 1989, Africa was awash in civil wars. Ambassador Hank Cohen initiated an aggressive policy of diplomatic intervention in African conflicts, using the prestige and credibility of the world’s only superpower to search for peace. Cohen details his own and others’ efforts in seven...
Ambassador Herman J. “Hank” Cohen decided early in his 38-year career in the U.S. Foreign Service to specialize in African affairs. He made that decision in the late 1950s when the majority of the African nations were transitioning from European colonial rule to sovereign independence. His service in five U.S....
Herman Cohen draws on both the documentary record and his years of on-the-ground experience to provide a uniquely comprehensive survey and interpretation of nearly eight decades of US policy toward Africa. Tracing how this policy has evolved across successive administrations since 1942 (beginning with President Franklin D. Roosevelt's third term...