Memoirs and Occasional Papers – An ADST Series

ADST created the Memoirs and Occasional Papers Series to preserve firsthand accounts, histories, and other informed observations on foreign affairs for scholars, journalists, and the general public.

Showing 11-20 of 42 Books
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Where the Styles Brook Waters Flow: The Place I Call Home
Where the Styles Brook Waters Flow: The Place I Call Home
Duvall, Lorraine M. Memoirs and Occasional Papers

"Where the Styles Brook Waters Flow: The Place I Call Home by Lorraine Duvall is a love song to 'The Glen' and to the richness and importance of the Styles Brook Watershed, part of the wildlife corridor called the Split Rock Wildway in NY's eastern Adirondack Mountains. Like a river,...

An Unlikely Journey – Make A Difference – Do Good – Have Fun
An Unlikely Journey – Make A Difference – Do Good – Have Fun
Erwin, Mark W. Memoirs and Occasional Papers
BORN INTO A FAMILY OF WEALTH and privilege during World War II, Mark Erwin's childhood was less than normal or happy. The son of a free-spirited, socialite mother...
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Ambassador to a Small World is a highly personal portrait of Chad from the vantage point of Christopher E. Goldthwait, the longest-serving U.S. Ambassador to N’Djamena. The book touches on Chad’s politics, economy, and society and on U.S. foreign policy, foreign aid, and the life of the small American community in one of the continent’s most isolated countries. More deeply, the book comprises Goldthwait’s perceptive reflections on the country and its people and his thoughtful account of what he learned from them. He relates the joys and frustrations of being ambassador in a so-called “presence post.” Goldthwait’s final letter, written a month after he returned to Washington, tells how experiencing Chad led him to see his own country and city in a new light. Originating as a series of monthly letters to a dozen close friends, the book preserves the epistolary format, with the letters grouped into topical chapters. Much of the book is a travelogue, describing 25,000 miles of travel, of which 15,000 were overland, to nearly every corner of Chad. What began as descriptive quickly became analytical and reflective. Because the letters deal more with the nature of the country and its people than with specific events, they can still pass contemporary muster.
Ambassador to a Small World
Goldthwait, Christopher E. Ambassadors, Memoirs and Occasional Papers

Ambassador to a Small World is a highly personal portrait of Chad from the vantage point of Christopher E. Goldthwait, the longest-serving U.S. Ambassador to N’Djamena. The book touches on Chad’s politics, economy, and society and on U.S. foreign policy, foreign aid, and the life of the small American community...

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In the Aftermath of Genocide: The U.S. Role in Rwanda deepens understanding of the Rwandan genocide and the Congolese war that engulfed Central Africa in the 1990s and America’s policy response to the crises. Gribbin draws on his thirty years of diplomatic experience in the region to analyze U.S. perceptions of Rwanda in the years before the genocide and to recount the unfolding of the terrible event itself. Most important, he describes what happened afterwards–how the new government and people of Rwanda, together with their international partners, confronted devastation, picked up the pieces, and began to forge a new nation. They had to reestablish viable government, deliver justice to those guilty of genocide, repatriate over a million refugees, and confront an insurgency and war in the Congo. In the Aftermath of Genocide is an insider’s account of these crucial events and of what the U.S. government knew, or did not know, and what it did, or did not do, about these challenges. Bob Griffin spent thirty years on diplomatic assignments in Africa, serving twice in Rwanda, once before and once after the genocide. As U.S. ambassador to Rwanda from 1995 to 1999, he worked for reconstruction, the return of refugees, reconciliation, and regional peace. Now retired, he undertakes short-term diplomatic postings to the continent he knows so well, in addition to consulting, writing, and teaching.
In the Aftermath of Genocide
Gribbin, Robert E. Africa, history, Memoirs and Occasional Papers

In the Aftermath of Genocide: The U.S. Role in Rwanda deepens understanding of the Rwandan genocide and the Congolese war that engulfed Central Africa in the 1990s and America’s policy response to the crises. Gribbin draws on his thirty years of diplomatic experience in the region to analyze U.S. perceptions...

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Since September 11, 2001, U.S. public diplomacy has come under increased scrutiny along with renewed debate about its necessity. Until 1999, the United States Information Agency (USIA) was responsible for what is now called “public diplomacy,” conducting media, cultural, and educational exchange programs. Nine Lives recounts successful public diplomacy programs that could offer valuable lessons for current and future public diplomacy practitioners. It discusses terrorism, narcotics trafficking, Islamic customs and beliefs, and how each post differs in accordance with U.S. foreign policy objectives at the time. Allen Hansen’s memoir depicts the excitement, frustration, satisfactions, and glamour of his Foreign Service career with the USIA in nine countries to which he was posted during the Cold War. Each chapter provides informative insight on the host country’s relationship with the United States and outlines the objectives and programs of the U.S. Information Service (USIS, the agency’s overseas name). Hansen recounts the achievements or lack thereof of American and local personnel and shares vivid anecdotes about professional colleagues from the Department of State and other agencies. Intrigue, coups d’etat, civil war, a murder in Montevideo, and breathtaking, at times harrowing, adventures surround his global odyssey to exotic locales. Allen C. Hansen joined USIA as a member of its second junior officer training clas in 1954, a year after the agency’s creation. As a Foreign Service officer for 32 years, he served in nine countries and, periodically, in Washington, D.C. He retired in 1987 and has authored five books.
Nine Lives
Hansen, Allen C. International Relations - Diplomacy, Memoirs and Occasional Papers

Since September 11, 2001, U.S. public diplomacy has come under increased scrutiny along with renewed debate about its necessity. Until 1999, the United States Information Agency (USIA) was responsible for what is now called “public diplomacy,” conducting media, cultural, and educational exchange programs. Nine Lives recounts successful public diplomacy programs...

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The fifty-seven short essays in this book set the scene for the difficulties that now threaten Egypt. They were written during 1990–1995 while Lillian Harris, a former American Foreign Service officer married to Alan Goulty, a British diplomat, lived in Cairo. The essays explore Egypt’s cities, deserts, societies, monasteries, and circumstances in a time of widespread unrest that helped set the scene for the Arab Spring two decades later. Other essays examine life in Cairo, diplomatic difficulties, religious tensions, the problems of the poor, unrest under the Mubarak regime, and travels in many of the remoter parts of Egypt now largely off-limits to foreigners. Dr. Harris’s travels gave her insights on many of the key themes relevant to political debate in Egypt today––the genesis of political malaise and extremism, economic fragility and the wealth gap, terrorism, threats to the environment and to Egypt’s rich cultural heritage, and perennial social issues such as the Muslim-Christian divide, women’s rights, population pressures, and leprosy. Enriching the book is the personal spiritual lens through which Lillian Harris views her experiences. She provides a unique picture of Egypt and Egyptians at a crucial period of Egypt’s modern history.
Travels into the Heart of Egypt
Harris, Lillian Craig Memoirs and Occasional Papers

The fifty-seven short essays in this book set the scene for the difficulties that now threaten Egypt. They were written during 1990–1995 while Lillian Harris, a former American Foreign Service officer married to Alan Goulty, a British diplomat, lived in Cairo.

The essays explore Egypt’s cities, deserts, societies, monasteries, and...

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Deane Hinton’s memoir presents a reliable firsthand account of the development of U.S. strategic economic policy and the new institutions that became the framework for trade, aid, economic growth, and monetary policy. Hinton was one of a handful of experts on these issues to serve in high policy positions throughout the Cold War. He moved rapidly up the promotion ladder because his knowledge and skills were in short supply at the State Department. State’s senior practitioners, and occasionally presidents, called upon his talent for negotiation. The book recounts Hinton’s youth, army service in Italy in World War II, and 48-year diplomatic career, starting with political, commercial, and consular postings and including economic studies at Fletcher and Harvard. In the Paris embassy’s Office of the Treasury Attaché, he analyzed French money supply and worked on taxation issues. At State, he became an expert in negotiations to establish the European Common Market, then served in Brussels as a charter member of the U.S. Mission to the European Community. After a break at the National War College, he worked on commodity issues and Kennedy Round trade negotiations. Subsequently he brought his economic gifts to bear on development issues, serving as AID director and economic counselor in Guatemala and Chile. Recalled to Washington, he spent four years in the White House, three as deputy director of the Council on International Economic Policy. Hinton also served as Assistant Secretary of State for Economics and Business in the Carter administration. Overseas he served in eleven posts, in six of them as ambassador. In Pakistan President Zia lied to Ambassador Hinton about his plans for nuclear weapons, which Zia balanced by lying to the Soviets about his and U.S. support for the mujahadeen. His book is a serious record of events and analysis by a skilled policy maker. Following military service, Deane Hinton joined the U.S. Foreign Service in 1946. For forty-eight years, he witnessed history at first hand. Few FSOs can match his range of experience: in Europe, the Near East, Africa, South Asia, Latin America, and Washington. Consular experience, advanced economic training, financial reporting, and intelligence analysis followed a posting in Damascus in the first Palestine War, before working on European issues. Assignments to Latin America and AID led to a White House assignment working on top-level economic issues. After Mobutu expelled him as ambassador to Zaire, Hinton became ambassador to the European Communities. As ambassador to El Salvador, he faced out-of-control army death squads. Pakistan was difficult but fabulous for its history and sights. Hinton retired in 1994 as ambassador to Panama and a Career Ambassador, the Foreign Service’s highest rank.
Economics and Diplomacy
Hinton, Deane R. Diplomats, biography, Memoirs and Occasional Papers

Deane Hinton’s memoir presents a reliable firsthand account of the development of U.S. strategic economic policy and the new institutions that became the framework for trade, aid, economic growth, and monetary policy. Hinton was one of a handful of experts on these issues to serve in high policy positions throughout...

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Your Diplomats at Work: A Comedy in Seven Acts
Your Diplomats at Work: A Comedy in Seven Acts
Huffman, Franklin Biography, International Relations - Diplomacy

This book is an account of the author's sometimes comical, sometimes frustrating, but always enlightening adventures as a diplomat in seven countries. As a former academic who had worked and traveled in some sixty countries of the world before joining the Foreign Service, Huffman provides trenchant commentary on the history,...

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A detailed chronicle of the working life of an idealistic, action-oriented World War II veteran’s lifelong search for peace through strengthening democracies and the international institutions that unite them.
An Architect of Democracy
Huntley, James Robert Diplomats and Diplomacy, International relations, Memoirs and Occasional Papers

A detailed chronicle of the working life of an idealistic, action-oriented World War II veteran’s lifelong search for peace through strengthening democracies and the international institutions that unite them.

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A memoir of dramatic moments in recent history. On June 4, 1989, Joanne Grady Huskey was in Tiananmen Square and witnessed the horror of a government attacking its own people. On August 7, 1998, she was in the basement of the American Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, with her two small children when al Qaeda bombed the building. After September 11, 2001, having just returned to the United States after years overseas, she responded to the atrocities in New York and Washington. She recounts her experiences living and working in China during the 1989 “Beijing Spring” and, fifteen years later, in Taiwan. In between came postings to Chennai, India, and Nairobi, where she helped Kenyan victims after the Embassy bombing. Huskey co-founded Global Adjustments in India, a cross-cultural training company, and the American International School of Chennai. Earlier, she was International Director of VSA Arts at the John F. Kennedy Center in Washington. For her work with disabled children in China she was awarded the Secretary of State’s Outstanding Volunteer Award for East Asia and the Pacific.
The Unofficial Diplomat
Huskey, Joanne Grady Diplomats' spouses, Memoirs and Occasional Papers

A memoir of dramatic moments in recent history. On June 4, 1989, Joanne Grady Huskey was in Tiananmen Square and witnessed the horror of a government attacking its own people. On August 7, 1998, she was in the basement of the American Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, with her two small...

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