The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 ushered in a fraught time in the lives of East and West…
Helping Rebuild Rwanda After the 1994 Genocide
Rebuilding Rwanda after the genocide was no easy task. USAID tasked George Lewis to head up that agency’s efforts to…
Foreign Service Newly-Weds in 1960s Yemen
Since the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, Yemen was been a hot spot for unrest in the Middle East. The…
When One of “The Murrow Boys” Became a Foreign Service Wife
Mary Marvin Breckinridge Patterson was the only female member of the original generation of CBS Radio war correspondents known as…
A Sketch in Time: Cape Verde from an Ambassador’s View
The nation of Cape Verde, now known as Cabo Verde, is a group of islands located off the western coast…
Drogas y Derechos Humanos: Changing U.S. Policy towards Guatemala
In June 1954 the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, concerned about the threat of communism in Guatemala, assisted in the overthrow…
Basketball: the Fifth Basket of the Helsinki Final Act
The Helsinki Final Act, an agreement signed by 35 nations at the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE)…
Negotiating the Limited Test Ban Treaty (LTBT)
Due to rising concern about radioactive fallout from increasingly big nuclear tests underwater, in space, in the atmosphere and underground,…
Chipping Away at Czechoslovak Communism: The Helsinki Final Act and Charter 77
The Solidarity Movement. Perestroika and Glasnost. The fall of the Berlin Wall. All of these movements, policies, or events had…
The Charismatic Dalai Lama
Born into a humble farming family on July 6, 1935, Lhamo Dhondup (Tenzin Gyatso), had subtle beginnings before he became…