Category: Foreign Affairs
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Walden in Africa & Other Diplomatic Readings
Among the 53 titles compiled in this Month’s Foreign Service Journal is Dan Whitman’s Answer Coming Soon. Whatever else it provides to those who read it, Answer undeniably will provide this: a reflection on the power of books. The power is especially profound for those who spend their lives in places where electricity can be spotty…
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The Polyglot Archipelago
Seven islands form the area now called Mumbai (Bombay until 1995). Marathi, Hindi, and English are just a few of the languages spoken there, including Bambaiva, a blend of Gujarati, Konkani, Urdu, Indian English, and more. Its home to 18.5 million, India’s most populous city. Rudyard Kipling, Salman Rushdie, and Fareed Zakaria all were born…
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Angels Walk Here
This blog opened four years ago with the following: I wish more people were reading books. Here’s what I’m reading: Heaven Is Coming Home, by David Suarez Gomez. That’s all I wrote. And I didn’t post again for months. I had a voracious appetite for reading and I was writing books, but they were years from…
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The Paneless Window Washer
The air and leaves outside turn to fall. In the week ahead we’ll celebrate Rosh Hashanah, Navrathri, and the official start of Autumn. I’ll hold the first book discussion for my debut novel, 18 months old already. My Foreign Service colleagues and I will start the annual ritual of progress into new jobs, new countries,…
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Stand Up Comedy
In an effort to prove why writing is easy and speaking is hard, I decided to do live stand-up at the library in Oakton, VA. Drop by to find out why I write instead of preach, and what’s behind that title—Two Pumps for the Body Man. Register here.
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Diplomatic Casualties
The morning of December 6, 2004, five heavily armed terrorists stormed the U.S. Consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. I remember loud pops from the AK-47s and the muffled thud of improvised explosive devices; I remember hours hunkered under a desk and a scramble for protection when the Marine called “Gas!; I remember crouching through our…
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Diplomats and Terrorists
Last month American Diplomacy included my review of Ambassador James R. Bullington’s Foreign Service Memoir, The Road Less Traveled. The book recounts a career that began with the U.S. military build-up in Vietnam and took the author to Burma, Chad, Benin, and Burundi, where he served as Ambassador, and Niger, where he served from 2001-2006 as Country Director…
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Expeditionary Diplomacy
The otherwise respectable American Diplomacy, which publishes ‘Foreign Service Despatches and Periodic Reports on U.S. Foreign Policy,’ included my review of of Ambassador James R. Bullington’s Foreign Service Memoir, The Road Less Traveled, in the latest lineup. The memoir recounts a career that started in expeditionary diplomacy for the State Department during the U.S. military…
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Voice
Paul Theroux’s voice in black and white, on the page, captivated me from the start: natural, authoritative, transferring all kinds of observation from the most minute cultural idiosyncrasy to the cruelest cut at character—fictional or real. I started reading him 20 years ago with My Secret History. Until today, I’d known Theroux only through text…
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More Foreign Service Fiction
The latest release from ex-Foreign Service Officer Peter Van Buren, author of controversial Iraq reconstruction expose We Meant Well, is set during World War Two. We may find ourselves in 1940s Japan, but Hooper’s War aims its barbs dead-center at the contemporary conflagrations in Iraq and Afghanistan. “The men and women in Hooper confront the complex ethical decisions of war,…
Ben East Books 