The Foreign Service Journal, May 2013

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | MAY 2013 69 better if firewalled off from those with other priorities. An independent cultural agency along the lines of Britain’s British Council or Germany’s Goethe Institute would be insulated from political tides and would also always be its highest priority.” Cull ends by observing that “Amer- ica’s public diplomats in the field were able to make a difference to the outworking of U.S. foreign policy. Much excellent work is still done today and will be done tomorrow, but how much more could be done if today’s public diplomats were blessed with the sort of stable structure, energetic leadership and adequate budgets available in 1988 when Charles Z. Wick presided over an empire of communication called USIA.” Speaking of budgetary matters, there is no getting around the fact that at $85, this hardcover “library” edition is expensive. But anyone interested in a scholarly, well-written, extensively researched history of USIA will find it worth the investment. And let us hope that a more affordable paperback edition will soon be forthcoming (as occurred with the first volume) so that this important book receives the widest circulation possible. n Allen C. Hansen, a 32-year Foreign Service veteran of the U.S. Information Agency, is the author of USIA: Public Diplomacy in the Computer Age (Praeger, 1989) and Nine Lives: A Foreign Service Odyssey (New Academia, 2007). The story of USIA’s demise will already be painfully familiar to many readers. But it is well worth recalling.