The Foreign Service Journal, October 2019

34 OCTOBER 2019 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL A Seat in the Front Row: Recollections of a Foreign Service Officer in the Cold War Wolfgang J. Lehmann, independently published, 2019, $22.99/paperback, 220 pages. Taking readers from the Anzio beach- head in 1944 to the rooftop of the U.S. embassy in 1975 Saigon, this expansive memoir recounts the wide-ranging life of a Foreign Service officer who did indeed occupy a front-row seat during the Cold War. In its pages, Wolfgang J. Lehmann recounts his role in imple- menting postwar refugee policy, and his years as political adviser to the Bureau for European Affairs, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and U.S. European Command. He also served as deputy chief of mission at Embassy Saigon and played a crucial role in the U.S. evacuation of Vietnam in April 1975, among many other Foreign Service assignments. Wolfgang J. Lehmann was a Foreign Service officer with the Department of State from 1951 until 1983. He continued his pro- fessional activities for another 18 years after that as an indepen- dent national security and foreign affairs consultant, concentrat- ing primarily on political and military war-gaming. Beginning in 1983, he organized and chaired the international political teams for the annual Naval War College Global War Game. He died in 2018. Walter G. Lehmann, the author’s nephew, edited the manu- script after his passing and contributed an introduction. An attorney and business consultant for more than 18 years, he is managing partner of the entertainment law firm Lehmann Strobel PC. People of Earth: The First Forty Carl Coon, independently published, 2018, $20/paperback, $9.99/Kindle, 393 pages. A collection of vignettes, People of Earth attempts to answer, as Carl Coon writes, the “big ‘why’ questions.” In “Preview,” the author plainly states his intention to make sense of his experi- ences in the hope they will lead to an understanding of humanity. This desire is apparent—while he reminisces about a life unusually led, Coon looks toward how it fits with the human experience and what that means. Throughout his retelling of these years, Coon celebrates all humanity in uplifting and engag- ing prose. An insatiable curiosity and ambitious quest for answers drive this memoir. Coon describes in vivid detail his “first 40 years”: an unconventional upbringing by adventuresome parents, his days in the Army during World War II and then life in postwar Germany, and his time at post in Syria, Morocco, India and Iran, among other countries. From a young age, Carl Coon traveled around the world with his father, an accomplished anthropologist. He graduated from Harvard University in 1949 with a degree in geography. From 1949 to 1985, he served in the U.S. Foreign Service; his last post was as ambassador to Nepal. In 2013, in recognition of his work with the American Humanist Association, he received its Life- time Achievement Award. Carl Coon passed away on Dec. 3, 2018, at age 91, several months after contacting the Journal about the completion of this first volume of his autobiography. The second volume, People of Earth: The Second Passage , containing essays by Carl Coon and his second wife, Jane, an FSO, about their diplomatic careers and life, was independently published in May 2019. Friendly Fires: Recollections of a Diplomatic Family, Vols. I & II Robert and Barbara Pringle, Piscataqua Press, 2018, $29.99/ hardcover, 446 pages and 442 pages, respectively. In this two-volume memoir, Robert and Barbara Pringle relate decades worth of diplomatic work and life. Whether meeting with local repre- sentatives of political Islam in Indone- sia or serving as the right-hand man to the director of the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research, Robert Pringle’s expansive diplomatic career put him on the frontlines of foreign policy decision-making, both in Washington and abroad. Beside him through it all was Bar- bara, a loving and understanding wife who not only was supportive but at times instrumental to effective diplomacy.