The Foreign Service Journal, October 2019

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | OCTOBER 2019 35 A major objective of the authors is to highlight the role of a modern spouse in a diplomatic career. Through their different skill sets and personalities, the Pringles were able to comple- ment each other and manage the challenges of overseas living. From flat plane landings and insects in hotel rooms to episodic malaria, Robert and Barbara were able to weather the tribula- tions of living abroad in hard places. Robert Pringle retired after 37 years in the Foreign Service. His career included postings in Indonesia, Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso), Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, South Africa and Mali, where he served as ambassador. Pringle earned a Ph.D. in Southeast Asian history from Cornell University. Barbara Pringle retired from her teaching career in 2003. Crossing the Sahara Desert Paul Pometto, Word Association Publishers, 2018, $14.95/paperback, 66 pages. Having just completed a two-year pro- gram as a U.S. Peace Corps Volunteer in West Africa in 1976, Paul Pometto decided to take the long way home. After studying Michelin maps and borrowed guidebooks, he crossed the Sahara Desert, took a boat to Italy and then flew back to Washington, D.C. His monthlong journey brought him strong cross-cultural friendships, physical exhaustion, priceless vistas and deep frus- trations. Hospitalized overnight in a small clinic in Tamanrasset, Algeria, he unhooked himself from an intravenous line to catch a bus that ran only once a week toward the Tunisian border. Most of the memoir is based on the author’s day-by-day recollection of the journey, with very few edits. Over a 42-year government career, Paul Pometto held posi- tions at State as a civil servant, general services specialist and management-coned Foreign Service officer. He spent most of his career in Africa and Europe, serving as deputy chief of mission in Praia, Djibouti and Paris, among many other postings. Before retiring from the Senior Foreign Service in 2016 at the rank of Counselor, he served in Fort Lauderdale as director of the State Department’s Florida Regional Center—a collaborative effort involving more than 130 employees, 11 bureaus and two U.S. Marine Security Guard companies. Mr. Pometto resides in San Diego but continues to travel widely. He has already visited 146 nations. Drunk at the State Department William V.P. Newlin, Four Winds Press, 2019, $17/paperback, 288 pages. In this candid memoir, which he mar- kets as “ Mad Men meets the Foreign Service,” William V.P. Newlin recounts his 25-year Foreign Service career as an alcoholic who spent considerable energy hiding his drinking from his wife, children and bosses. Growing up in high-society Philadelphia and summering in Bar Harbor, Maine, Newlin was surrounded by adults who made cocktails seem glamorous. At boarding school and Harvard, he developed a habit of secret drinking; he continued it at his first diplomatic posting in Paris, and all the way through a career that saw him become consul general in Nice in 1983. Newlin claims his Foreign Service career was “completely undistinguished,” largely because he was drunk most of the time. But not once did a boss or colleague call him on the drinking. “I don’t know how many others of me there were,” he says. Newlin’s wife, Louisa, who writes the afterword, says Newlin wrote the book to “exorcise his demons,” and that he has been sober for 30 years. While he still feels enormous guilt over his drinking, she notes, “he did some fine work for State, and it is time for him to stop beating himself up.” The couple recently celebrated their 63rd anniversary. WilliamNewlin retired from the Foreign Service in 1986. Since then he has written a book about lakes onMount Desert Island, Maine; mediated in the District of Columbia court system; and for his 80th birthday, sailed across the Atlantic on a Norwegian tall ship. Journey Across Time: A Diplomatic Spouse in South Asia Susan Gillerman Boggs, Austin Macauley Publishers, 2019, $23.95/paperback, $4.95/e-book, 463 pages. For 14 years Susan Gillerman Boggs joined her Foreign Service officer husband on five separate tours of duty in South Asia. This memoir chronicles the frustrations and delights of diplomatic life in a culturally fascinating part of the world. Drawn from hundreds of letters the author wrote home,