The Foreign Service Journal, October 2019

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | OCTOBER 2019 27 T he Foreign Service Journal is pleased to present our 18th annual Foreign Ser- vice authors roundup in plenty of time for holiday orders. Our primary purpose in compiling “InTheir Own Write” is to celebrate the wealth of literary talent within the Foreign Service community, and to give our readers the opportunity to support colleagues by sampling their wares. Each entry contains full publication details along with a short commentary. As has been the case for more than a decade, a majority of the titles are self-published. Our annotated list of books—written, edited or translated by Foreign Service personnel and their family members in late 2018 and 2019—is not a comprehensive or definitive record of works by FS authors; we rely on the authors themselves to bring their books to our attention. This year we’re featuring 46 volumes—7 works of history and biography, 8 books on policy and issues, 9 works of fiction and poetry, a potpourri of 5 works on food, parenting and expat life—and no fewer than 17 memoirs. As usual, we also include in this month’s focus a selection of recent books “of related interest” to diplomats and their families that were not written by FS authors. For the few books that cannot be ordered through Amazon or other online outlets, we have provided the necessary contact information. This year’s roundup was assembled with the vital assis- tance of Publications Coordinator Dmitry Filipoff, Contributing Editor Steven Alan Honley, Associ- ate Editor Cameron Woodworth, Managing Editor Kathryn Owens and AFSA Intern Caroline Quinn. —Susan Brady Maitra, Senior Editor We are pleased to present this year’s collection of books by Foreign Service members and their families. BIOGRAPHYAND HISTORY Lincoln, Antietam and A Northern Lost Cause Gene Schmiel, independently published, 2019, $13.99/paperback, 202 pages. What if, even after the Union had won the Civil War and Abraham Lincoln had issued the Emancipation Proclama- tion, slavery had remained legal in the United States? In this thought-provoking specula- tive history, written in a “you are there” style using the words of the participants themselves, award-winning Civil War historian Gene Schmiel shows exactly how such a tragic outcome could have occurred. He takes as his starting point the Battle of Antietam (Sept. 17, 1862), which was perceived as a victory for the Union—one that emboldened President Abraham Lincoln to issue the Emancipa- tion Proclamation the following January. But had General Robert E. Lee made different tactical decisions and won that battle, he could have created what Schmiel calls a “Civil War butterfly effect” that irrevocably changed American history. Schmiel reminds readers that Lincoln primarily intended the Emancipation Proclamation as an incentive for the states of the Confederacy to rejoin the Union—even if they did not abolish slavery. So, as he lays out in this book, that dreadful institution might well have endured even after the war’s end. Gene Schmiel retired from the Foreign Service in 2002, after a 24-year career that included tours as chargé d’affaires in Djibouti, Bissau and Reykjavík, among many other assignments. Before joining the Service, he was an assistant professor of history at St. Francis University in Pennsylvania, and has taught at Mary- mount, Shenandoah and Penn State universities. He has written and lectured about the Civil War since the 2014 publication by Ohio University Press of his award-winning book, Citizen-General: Jacob Dolson Cox and the Civil War Era . Lions at the Legation & Other Tales: Two Centuries of American Diplomatic Life in Tangier Gerald Loftus, illustrated by Lawrence Mynott, Tangier American Legation, 2018, $20/paperback, 54 pages. For two centuries, U.S. diplomacy in Morocco—the first nation to recognize American independence—focused on Tangier. In 1821, when the legation building was given to the United States,