24 NOVEMBER 2023 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL economics officer in 1971. The couple’s first assignment was to Tegucigalpa, where Mathia made the critical faux pax of neglecting to wear nylons to a ladies luncheon. This and other tales of life as a spouse in the 1970s and 1980s are sure to entertain. Mathia spent 23 years as a Foreign Service spouse, working as an educator throughout. She, her husband, and two daughters were posted to Honduras, Panama (twice), Pakistan, and the Dominican Republic. She returned to the United States in 1993 and continued to work as an educator in Indiana. In 2021 Mathia took part in an oral history project for spouses of Foreign Service employees through the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training. Washington Heights – Muskoka: A Bicultural Upbringing Bob McCarthy, independently published, 2023, $14.50/paperback, e-book available, 270 pages. In the introduction to Washington Heights – Muskoka: A Bicultural Upbringing, Bob McCarthy acknowledges that his life doesn’t readily lend itself to writing a memoir: There were no dramatic events, disasters, or shifts of fate to give his story a true narrative arc. And yet, he writes, “there should be a space for the average guy” to write down his life. McCarthy then gets down to business, writing his “love letter” to the two places he called home before he joined the Foreign Service: the bustling Washington Heights neighborhood of New York City and the quiet Canadian lake town, Muskoka, where he spent summers with his mother’s family. Thanks to the free Russian-language classes offered by Fordham University during the Cold War, the author developed an interest in Russian while in high school, which led to his eventual career in the Foreign Service, with several assignments to Eastern Europe and Russia. Anyone interested in what life was like for a kid in New York in the 1950s will be charmed by this book, as well as anyone interested in what diplomats do. Bob McCarthy joined the State Department in 1973 and served in Belgrade, Budapest, Moscow (twice), Podgorica, and St. Petersburg. He retired from the Foreign Service in 2002. Washington Heights – Muskoka is his first book. From American Diplomat to Diplomatic Educator: Building Global Bridges to Understanding Richard W. Mueller, Arlington Hall Press, 2023, $18.99/paperback, e-book available, 355 pages. During his 32-year career as a Foreign Service officer, Richard Mueller worked for Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger, George Shultz, and James Baker. In this memoir, a volume in the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training’s Memoirs and Occasional Papers series, Mueller writes about his experiences with these men, giving a personal spin on decades of global foreign policy. He also writes about serving at the U.S. embassy in Saigon during the Vietnam War, at the United States Liaison Office in Beijing in the 1970s before the establishment of a formal embassy, and as the highest-ranking U.S. diplomat in Hong Kong before it returned to Chinese control. The book is intended to give average Americans insight into the inner workings of the State Department’s global network of embassies and other missions. The book also covers Mueller’s second career after he retired from the Foreign Service in 1998. As the title of the book suggests, Mueller moved into the field of education, becoming the head of school first at Northfield Mount Hermon School in Massachusetts and later at Hong Kong International School and Shanghai American School. Mueller explains the connections he sees between diplomacy and education, as both fields work to “build bridges to understanding among diverse countries and peoples.” Richard Mueller and his wife, Claire, live in Golden, Colorado. Paths I Have Walked Jo Ann Fuson Staples, FriesenPress, 2023, $29.99/paperback, e-book available, 378 pages. From a childhood of poverty and abuse in the mountains of southeastern Kentucky, Jo Ann Fuson Staples grew up to travel the world as a Foreign Service spouse. In Paths I Have Walked, Staples tells the story of that journey. The story is deeply personal, covering her mother’s murder at the hands of an abusive spouse and her own troubled relationships, including with a man suspected by the FBI of being skyjacker D.B. Cooper. While on a flight to visit the D.B. Cooper suspect in prison, she met
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