FSOs, In Their Own Write


A Roundup of Recent Books by Foreign Service Authors.
Steven Alan Honley, Associate Editor

The Foreign Service Journal is pleased to institute what we hope will become a regular feature in these pages: An annotated roundup of the latest volumes written or edited by Foreign Service officers, past and present.

Since this is the first time we have run this feature, we have decided to list books as far back as 1998. (Future iterations of the list will cover a year or less at a time.) While the traditional Foreign Service genres of diplomatic memoirs, travel guides and thoughtful analyses of international affairs are well-represented, our list of 20 titles also includes several novels, a work of science fiction, and even a book on picture postcards.

Our primary purpose in compiling this list is to celebrate the wealth of literary talent within the Foreign Service community, and to give our readers the opportunity to support your colleagues by sampling their wares. Towards that end, each entry contains full publication data (including contact information for those titles available only by direct order from the publisher) along with my capsule description.

While many of these books, all from commercial or academic publishers, are available from bookstores and other sources, we encourage our readers to use the link to Amazon.com from the AFSA web site to order your selections. But enough crass commercialism. On to the books!

So, You Want to Join the Peace Corps ... What to Know Before You Go
Dillon Banerjee, Ten Speed Press, 2000, paperback, 192 pages, $12.95
Dillon Banerjee was a Peace Corps volunteer from 1994 to 1996 in Cameroon and is now an FSO currently serving with USAID in Washington. This guide is geared to those contemplating volunteering for the Peace Corps but its insights are widely applicable and of interest to the larger Foreign Service community.

Media Access and the Military: The Case of the Gulf War
Judith Raine Baroody, University Press of America, 1998, 209 pages, hardcover $59, paperback $36.50
Judith Baroody was a journalist and documentary producer before joining the Foreign Service in 1984; she is now deputy director of the NEA office of public diplomacy. The Middle East Journal called her examination of media coverage of wars "thorough, insightful, and balanced," noting that the author's dual background gives her "a keen understanding of both unique cultures."

The United States in Honduras, 1980-1981: An Ambassador's Memoir
Jack R. Binns, McFarland & Co., 2000, paperback, 407 pages, $39.95
Retired FSO Jack Binns was ambassador to Honduras during the transition between the Carter and Reagan administrations. This memoir, structured in the form of a diary, is based largely on primary documentation, including over 1,000 pages of classified correspondence not previously available to the public. Binns says the principal purpose of his work is "to beam new light on shadowed corners of U.S. policy in Central America" during this pivotal period.

Losing a Continent: France's North American Policy, 1753Ð1763
Frank W. Brecher, Greenwood Press, 1998, hardcover, 240 pages, $65
Retired FSO Frank Brecher tells the dramatic story of how the French and Indian War ended in the eviction of the French from all of Canada. Although this is a scholarly work, Brecher's exploration of French diplomacy (based largely on primary documents) and his lively style bring this largely forgotten war to life.

DACOR Bacon House
William D. Calderhead, DACOR Bacon House Foundation, 1999, paperback, 159 pages, $17.50 (available by mail from DACOR, Inc, 1801 F St., NW, Washington, D.C., 20006)
Bill Calderhead, a retired FSO, is the curator of Diplomatic and Consular Officers, Retired's educational and cultural entity, the DACOR Bacon House Foundation. Here he recounts the fascinating history, illustrated with beautiful photographs, of the nearly 175-year-old Bacon House, now DACOR's headquarters.

Cooperation or Conflict in the Taiwan Strait
Ralph N. Clough, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 1999, 168 pages, hardcover $54, paperback $19.95
Ralph Clough's Foreign Service career concentrated on East Asian affairs and included 13 years in mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, as well as service as director of Chinese affairs. He is currently a professorial lecturer at Johns Hopkins University. As his title suggests, the work assesses the various factors favoring and impeding cross-strait dialogue between Taiwan and China, and argues for a U.S. policy of ambiguity towards both parties.

Our Man in Vienna: A Memoir
Richard Timothy Conroy, St. Martin's Press, 2000, hardcover, 336 pages, $24.95
By his own account, Richard Conroy's brief diplomatic career was anything but illustrious, but he certainly has made hilarious use of it in his memoirs. His 1997 book, Our Man in Belize, attracted rave reviews: Judith Martin ("Miss Manners") noted that "Richard Conroy is everybody's favorite diplomat, except, of course, the State Department's ... [and] the drollest diplomat since Lawrence Durrell." His latest memoir finds him (still "unmentioned in dispatches," as he ruefully admits) in 1960s Vienna, where he encounters a rogues' gallery of unforgettable characters.

Culture Wars and the Global Village: A Diplomat's Perspective
Carl Coon, Prometheus Books, 2000, hardcover, 245 pages, $27
Carl Coon was an FSO for 35 years and served as ambassador to Nepal from 1981 to 1984. He is also the author of Creatures of the Earth and the Mind and Sic Transit. Drawing both on his own experiences as an FSO and recent studies on human behavior and cross-cultural differences, his latest book asks why cultural conflicts are so prevalent just when globalization and multi-culturalism are more widespread than ever. He concludes that enlightened men and women -- and governments -- can cooperate to overcome them.

National Insecurity: U.S. Intelligence After the Cold War
Craig Eisendrath, editor, Temple University Press, 2000, hardcover, 298 pages, $34.50
Former FSO Craig Eisendrath, now a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy in Washington, not only edited the 10 essays assembled here but wrote the book's introductory and concluding chapters. Writing in the July-August 2000 issue of the Journal, reviewer Jack Binns said: "National Insecurity is an important work that deserves a wide audience. At a minimum, it should be required reading for all prospective ambassadors and DCMs."

Politica y color en Cuba: La Guerrita de 1912 (Black Politics in Cuba: The Race War of 1912)
Rafael Fermoselle, Editorial Colibri, 1st edition 1973, 2nd edition 1998, paperback, 213 pages, $20 plus $4.50 shipping/ handling outside Florida (available from: Ediciones Universal, 3090 SW 8th Street, Miami, FL, 33135, Phone: 305-642-3234; or by contacting EditorialColibri@mail.sendanet.es).
Rafael Fermoselle recently returned from four years as commercial counselor in Embassy Madrid to serve as a special assistant to the director general of the U.S. and Foreign Commercial Service with the office of planning. Although the fact that the text is in Spanish necessarily limits its appeal, Fermoselle reprints some telegrams and memos from Embassy Havana and Washington which reveal as much about the U.S. government's volatile internal dynamics as about the turmoil in Cuba. According to the Cambridge History of Latin America, this book is "a classic, definitive study on the subject of the race war of 1912."

Early Salvadoran Postcards, 1900-1950
Stephen Grant, Banco Cuscatlan, 1999, oversize hardcover, 328 pages, $62.50 (available from Librer’a Punto Literario: Tel: 503-243-7521 or 7522; Fax: 503-243-0412; e-mail: fundmaen@sv.cciglobal.net)
An education specialist with USAID for 20 years currently serving in San Salvador, Stephen Grant has published books and articles on the old postcards of Egypt, Guinea, Indonesia and now El Salvador. This handsome volume, developed and published in El Salvador, displays 100 handsome reproductions with detailed commentary in Spanish and English.

George Henry White: An Even Chance in the Race of Life
Benjamin R. Justesen, Louisiana State University Press, Nov. 2000 (scheduled), hardcover, 424 pages, $45
Former FSO Ben Justesen, now a freelance writer and editor, profiles one of the most important African-American political leaders of the last half of the 19th century in this authoritative, exhaustively researched biography. A North Carolina representative from 1897 to 1901, White was the last man of his race to serve in Congress until the 1930s. As Justesen documents, though White was a lifelong conservative by philosophy and a dedicated Republican, he was also a complex man with close ties to Booker T. Washington and the founders of the NAACP.

First Line of Defense: Ambassadors, Embassies and American Interests Abroad
Robert V. Keeley, editor, American Academy of Diplomacy, 2000, paperback, 124 pages, $9.95
The title of this work really says it all. First Line of Defense relates dozens of instances where chiefs of mission intervened successfully to further U.S. interests, even sometimes at the risk of their personal safety. Retired FSO Robert Keeley, himself a three-time ambassador (Mauritius, Zimbabwe and Greece), lets the stories he has compiled speak for themselves, which they do, quite eloquently.

Hostage to Fortune
Ted Mason, Bartleby Press, 1999, paperback, 266 pages, $12.95
Retired FSO Ted Mason has drawn on his experiences both as a public affairs officer in a variety of postings and as a political analyst for the Air Force to pen this novel featuring Ambassador Hal Potter. An expert on French colonialism, Potter has to use his expertise and diplomatic skills to overcome a variety of dangers in this action adventure set in the island republic of Sharqiya.

Diplomatic Relations
Robert G. Morris, Denlinger's Publishers, Ltd., 2000, electronic book, $6.95 (available from www.thebookden.com/diplomatic.cfm for download via e-mail, or as a 3.25-inch disk for an additional $3.55 shipping/handling per disk)
This "e-novel" by Robert Morris, a retired FSO, is also set in a fictitious country. His locale is the South American state of Colonia, which is hosting a conference to normalize diplomatic relations with Cuba within the Western Hemisphere. The secretary of State attends the conference amid bomb scares and threats from assassins, not to mention bureaucratic, political and romantic intrigue galore.

Inside Sudan: Political Islam, Conflict and Catastrophe
Donald Petterson, Westview Press, 1999, hardcover, 224 pages, $25
Donald Petterson was ambassador to Sudan from 1992 to 1995, having already served as ambassador to Somalia and Tanzania. (In 1998, he agreed to come out of retirement to take charge of the U.S. embassy in Monrovia.) Praising this "lucid and detailed memoir," President Jimmy Carter commented: "This authoritative account of U.S. foreign policy toward Sudan offers the insights of an experienced diplomat for greater understanding of both past and future events there."

Into Africa: Intercultural Insights
Yale Richmond and Phyllis Gestrin, Intercultural Press, 1998, paperback, 283 pages, $18.95 plus $3 shipping/handling/$4 outside the U.S. (available from Intercultural Press, Inc., P.O. Box 700, Yarmouth, ME, 04096; Phone: 1-800-370-2665)
Yale Richmond retired in 1980 following a 30-year career as a cultural officer and is the author of several books on intercultural communication. Phyllis Gestrin recently retired after 19 years as a senior technical adviser with USAID, including seven years in Somalia and Zaire. The first half of Into Africa emphasizes those cultural characteristics more or less common throughout sub-Saharan Africa, while the rest of the book compares and contrasts various regions and societies.

Congo Headmaster: The Story of an African Adventure
Harrison L. Shaffer, Jr., Whitewing Press, 1999, paperback, 213 pages, $14.95
In the 1950s, Harrison Shaffer and his wife Jacqueline spent six years as training teachers in a remote village in what was then the Belgian Congo, now the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Those experiences -- the basis of this memoir written after his retirement from USIA, following assignments in Vietnam, Nigeria and the Philippines -- helped inspire his decision to become an FSO.

Czechoslovakia's Lost Fight for Freedom: An American Embassy Perspective
Kenneth N. Skoug, Jr., Praeger Publishers, 1999, hardcover, 296 pages, $65
Kenneth Skoug, an FSO from 1957-1990, served in Czechoslovakia from 1967 to 1969. That gave him a front-row seat on the abortive "Prague Spring," and he uses his journal from the period, supplemented by recent memoirs and documentary materials in the National Archives, to present a full picture of the rise and fall of that all-too-brief reform movement.

The Undesirables
Mary C. Smith, Black Heron Press, 1998, hardback, 245 pages, $24.95
Mary Smith served as an FSO with USIA from 1966 to 1988. Although this novel is classified as science fiction, Smith comments that "The book [also] deals with bureaucratic politics in a 22nd century world, and is as close as I shall come to writing about my career in the Foreign Service." The Undesirables won the 1997 Black Heron Prize for Social Fiction.