The Foreign Service Journal, June 2018

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | JUNE 2018 85 Cody found his message enmeshed in “the interplay of performers and consumers across linguistic and cultural divides”; the “symbolic narratives” had to be “adapted to the interests and needs of the local population.” And although the Wild West left American shores with its “version of frontier history,” Cody “could not control its meaning for the extraordinarily varied [European] audience.” Such issues remain today at the heart of every public diplomacy endeavor. Every chapter offers a new and inter- esting perspective on European reception of the Wild West. The editor and 10 con- tributors’ topics include the role of Cody and Oscar Wilde in shaping trans-Atlan- tic national identities; Annie Oakley’s impact on Anglo-American womanhood; and the claim of Mussolini’s Italy in the 1930s that Cody was an Italian emigrant. A particularly fine chapter explores the simultaneous German encounter with “Buffalo Bill’s Indians” and the novels of Cody’s contemporary, Karl May, noting that “the appeal of the American West has helped shape the relationship between the United States and Germany from the formation and expansion of both countries to the present day.” Another outstanding chapter exam- ines the origins of a stereotype that began with European conflation of Cody and Theodore Roosevelt, that of America’s “cowboy” presidents and their allegedly bellicose foreign policies. Visiting Europe in 1910, “Roosevelt continued to play up his Rough Rider [a term originated by Cody in the 1890s] image,” but discovered that “there was a downside,” because “the Buffalo-Bill side of American life”— that is, the European interpretation of it—“overshadowed Roosevelt’s scholarly interests and a more nuanced diplo- macy.” Chances are good that today’s dip- lomats, unless they grew up west of the Missouri, are “telling America’s story” to foreign audiences more familiar with an important piece of it than they are. Across the Atlantic, Buffalo Bill and the Lakota performers who carried on the Wild West performance tradition until the eve of World War II wrote an important chapter in that story. These two outstanding books help us understand how they did so, and why American diplomats should care. n Edwina S. Campbell is a former FSO and retired professor whose publications include Germany’s Past and Europe’s Future (1989) and, most recently, Citizen of a Wider Com- monwealth: Ulysses S. Grant’s Postpresi- dential Diplomacy (Southern Illinois Uni- versity Press, 2016). The latter was included in the November 2017 Foreign Service Journal ’s “In Their Own Write” compilation. Every chapter offers a new and interesting perspective on European reception of the Wild West. Take AFSA With You! Change your address online, visit us at www.afsa.org/ address Or Send changes to: AFSAMembership Department 2101 E Street NW Washington, DC 20037 Moving?