The Foreign Service Journal, September 2011

times strays fully into the quixotic, as when he urges the creation of cross- border wildlife preserves in Africa so that the new slogan there can be “make safari not war.” Slogans come a bit too easy for Khanna, in fact, and tend to be a bit too cute. For instance, he asserts that “America’s universities can drain the swamp better than any invasions.” That may well be true, but can come across as painfully naïve. Still, if one can get beyond the slo- gans and focus on its creative, fresh approach, this book could elicit new thinking within our organization. While fresh perspectives are not nec- essarily the panaceas he posits, they could prove helpful — at least in some places for some problems. With that in mind, I particularly encourage entry-level FSOs to read this book and start practicing mega- diplomacy! Keith Mines, a Foreign Service officer since 1991, is currently the director of the narcotics affairs section in Mexico City. His previous assignments include Tel Aviv, San Salvador, Port-au-Prince, Budapest, Ottawa and Washington, D.C. He has also done short tours in Mogadishu, Kabul, Ramadi and Dar- fur. B O O K S Good As Far As It Goes Encyclopedia of Media and Propaganda in Wartime America Martin J. Manning and Clarence R. Wyatt, editors; ABC-CLIO, 2011, $180, 2 vols., hardcover, 860 pages. R EVIEWED BY A LLEN C. H ANSEN This two-volume encyclopedia is a valuable research tool for all those in- terested in how U.S. media and the U.S. government viewed and pre- sented to the public most of the events that occurred in, or affected, the United States. As Martin Man- ning, the editor of the first volume, states in his preface, his intent “is to highlight individuals and events that were noteworthy for the media and propaganda that they generated.” Volume 1 covers the period from the North American colonial wars to the Spanish-American and Philip- pine-American wars, while Volume 2, edited by Clarence R. Wyatt, covers the period fromWorld War I through the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. To- gether, the work presents the views of more than 35 academics and experts, along with numerous illustrations and photographs of the events covered and individuals who participated in or publicized them, and samples of the propaganda products used to influ- ence public reactions. Each section is replete with references inviting fur- ther study. Martin Manning, the U.S. Infor- mation Agency archivist for many years and currently the State Depart- ment’s guardian of public diplomacy documents, is the author of The His- torical Dictionary of American Propa- ganda (Greenwood, 2004). Clarence Wyatt is a professor of history at Center College in Danville, Ky. Among his many published arti- cles on the VietnamWar is “Paper Sol- diers: The American Press and the Vietnam War .” While this monumental work makes a highly beneficial contribution to understanding the role of propa- ganda in American history, contempo- rary students of public diplomacy will be disappointed to find that the U.S. Information Agency—which for more than four decades was the leading propaganda agency of the U.S. gov- ernment — is not even listed in the index! Hopefully, the next printing will correct that sin of omission. Similarly, USIA’s seminal contribu- tion to ending the Cold War hardly re- ceives mention in this otherwise excellent encyclopedia. This may re- flect the editors’ unfortunate accept- ance of the false claim that long before 1999, when the agency was disbanded and folded into the State Department, it was no longer needed. Perhaps USIA was not quite as im- portant as those of us who served our country by “telling America’s story to the world” like to believe. However, this otherwise outstanding book would have better served its readers by saying more about that small but influential government agency. Those wishing to know more about Generation Yers, he believes, intuitively work this way, treating diplomacy not as vertical and hierarchical but as a distributed network. 44 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 1