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Witness to a Changing World
“These memoirs of an unusually wise and perceptive diplomat provide rare insight into America at the apogee of its global power.”
NICHOLAS BURNS, Harvard University professor and former Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs
Witness to a Changing World is the life story of David Dunlop Newsom, a Foreign Service officer who rose through the ranks from third secretary and vice consul in Karachi in 1948 to the top career post of Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs in the Carter administration. Along the way he served as Lyndon Johnson’s ambassador to Libya, Richard Nixon’s Assistant Secretary of State for African affairs and ambassador to Indonesia, and Jimmy Carter’s ambassador to the Philippines. Published by New Academia Publishing, his book is the 34th volume in the ADST-DACOR Diplomats and Diplomacy Series.
Throughout his eventful career, Newsom often served in countries such as Iraq and Libya that had just seen or were about to experience cataclysmic ruptures. His years heading the Africa Bureau revealed his sympathetic open-mindedness toward the peoples and countries of the continent. His reputation as an erudite student of history, a truth teller, and an incurable punster endeared him to friends and colleagues everywhere. His books include The Soviet Brigade in Cuba, Diplomacy and the American Democracy, The Public Dimension of Foreign Policy, and The Imperial Mantle: The United States, Decolonization, and the Third World. From 1981 to 1991 he served at Georgetown University as director of the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy and as professor and acting dean of the School of Foreign Service. He later taught at the University of Virginia.