For most of us, New Year’s Eve means watching the ball drop in Times Square on TV. For a lucky…
Memoirs of a Foreign Service Arabist
Back to Diplomats and Diplomacy Memoirs of a Foreign Service Arabist Available in January 2014 “Among Parker’s fascinating insights into…
In Ambassador We Don’t Trust: Working Under the Leadership of the Infamous Turner Shelton
As movies like “The Devil Wore Prada” attest, bad bosses can make everyone’s life miserable (and can be quite entertaining…
The Lockerbie Bombing and Its Aftermath
On December 21, 1988, Pan American flight 103 flying from London Heathrow to JFK Airport in New York exploded over…
The Dramatic Hostage Crisis and Daring Rescue at the Japanese Embassy in Peru
It sounds like something out of a novel: a group of rebels, helped by an American, seize an embassy in…
Oral Histories: Search Our Collection
Welcome! It’s easy to search our collection: For an Advanced Search of transcripts of over 2600 oral histories, see below.…
John S. Service – The Man Who “Lost China,” Part II
John Service, the son of missionaries who grew up in China, was one of the Department’s “China hands,” an expert…
The Civil War in China, Part II –The Dixie Mission and Losing China
After attempting to convince Washington that a civil war in China was imminent and that the Communists would be the…
The Civil War in China, Part I – The Bureaucratic Fight in Washington
Oftentimes the greatest foreign policy struggles are not with the host government but rather with the government bureaucracy back home.…
Pearl Harbor, A Postscript
One of the great dilemmas in foreign policy is when and whether to negotiate with one’s enemies. Will a dialogue…