The Foreign Service Journal - November 2017

38 NOVEMBER 2017 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL tours in Europe, the Middle East and West Africa, and served at the White House and the United Nations. Her unique life story and vision guided her career as a diplomat and earned her the Director General’s Cup and recognition fromworld leaders. After serving as the U.S. ambassador to Senegal from 2000 to 2002, Ambassador Elam-Thomas retired with the rank of Career Minister after 42 years in the Foreign Service. She then became director of the Diplomacy Program at the University of Central Florida in Orlando. She holds a B.S. degree in international busi- ness from Simmons College in Boston, Mass., an M.S. in public diplomacy from Tufts University’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, and four honorary doctorates. Her memoir, the 62nd volume in the ADST-DACOR Diplomats and Diplomacy Series, relates the untold story of the “little Elam girl” from Roxbury who helped bring much-needed diversity to the Foreign Service. The Kirkus review called her book “an infor- mative, behind-the-scenes look at one black woman’s rise through the ranks of the Foreign Service when few others like her were serving as diplomats.” Agent for Change in International Development: My Flight Path into the 21st Century (Volume 2) Lu Rudel, CreateSpace, 2016, $16.95/paperback, 390 pages. In this second volume of his memoir, Lu Rudel focuses on his family—his wife of 53 years, Joan, and their three children— and their life in the Foreign Service, as well as their extensive travels over the years—both in search of roots and for, as he puts it, “sheer pleasure.” There is a section with several chapters describing the family’s evolution, and there is a section chroni- cling seven short-term, post-retirement assignments in China, Mozambique, Latvia, Thailand, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. By contrast, the first volume of Mr. Rudel’s memoir, published in 2014, focuses on the author’s professional life working with U.S. foreign economic aid programs after World War II. There he describes serving in Iran after the fall of Mossadegh, in Turkey after the military coup of 1960, in India after the death of Nehru and in Pakistan following the withdrawal of the Soviet military from Afghanistan in 1988. Lu Rudel joined the USAID Foreign Service after completing his service in the U.S. Army. He retired in 1980. A Holocaust refu- gee, he came to the United States in 1938. He is also the author of Foreign Aid: Will It Ever Reach Its Sunset? (Foreign Policy Association of New York, 2005). Success Begins after 5:00 P.M. Nicolas M. Salgo, as told to Matthew J. Burns III; CreateSpace, 2017, $14.95/ paperback, $9.95/Kindle, 310 pages. When Nicolas M. Salgo was appointed the U.S. ambassador to Hungary in 1983, it was a strange homecoming. More than half a century earlier, he had been a boy in Budapest dreaming of a better life. The decades between his childhood and his return were full of romance, adventure, business and politics. In this posthumous memoir, published after the author’s death in March, Salgo chronicles his journey through the 20th century and the lessons he learned about the nature of suc- cess along the way. (The title refers to a motto he coined during a seminar at Harvard Business School.) Salgo created one of the first conglomerates, the Bangor Punta Corporation, helped build the Watergate Hotel and was appointed ambassador to the country he once called home. After spending three years in that position, he went on to conduct a number of economic and administrative negotiations on behalf of the Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations. Matthew J. Burns III, whose path crossed Salgo’s during a trip to Beijing in 1991, later joined the Foreign Service. He served in Rome, Tel Aviv and Washington, D.C., before leaving in 2005 to become director of international human resources for the Lock- heed Martin Corporation. FICTION AND POETRY Dead Cow Road: Life on the Front Lines of an International Crisis Mark Wentling, Page Publishing, Inc., 2017, $24.95/paperback, 510 pages. In this work of historical fiction, author MarkWentling combines exhaustive research with firsthand experience throughout Africa to produce a remarkable book on the U.S. response to Somalia’s 1992 famine that both educates and entertains. The story revolves around Ray Read, a Foreign Service officer who reluctantly accepts a difficult assignment, laying his life on the line in wartorn Somalia. Read persists in doing his duty despite difficult personal problems and his own growing doubts about U.S. policy in the complex emergency. Along the way readers will consume facts about the history, people and places of this troubled region of Africa. In the end, Ray recognizes that