74 OCTOBER 2024 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL Foundation, Trilateral Commission, World Economic Forum (Davos), and so forth. He also served on various governmental advisory boards and participated in “Track 2” diplomatic efforts. While no doubt worthy enterprises, the rundown of all the gatherings can be overwhelming at times. The title of Nye’s memoir refers to a catchphrase associated with Henry Luce, the publisher of Time and Life magazines. Luce envisioned a world in which the United States emerged from isolationism and transformed itself into a superpower. Luce’s wish, made in 1941, came true in the course of the World War II and Cold War eras. In giving a nod to Luce, the author is not making any sort of statement in favor of an American imperium. While it has done much that is positive, Nye avers that the U.S. government over the years has had to learn the hard way that “our power always had limits.” Examples given: the interventions in Vietnam and Iraq. The author lightens his text by painting a series of fascinating vignettes. As a student in the late 1950s, he was enthralled by the “gothic spires” of Oxford while suffering from the “cold and damp” of England. During a visit to Libya in 2007, he vividly recounts meeting with Muammar Qaddafi in the “surreal” setting of a Bedouin tent. The voluble autocrat gave him a signed copy of the “little green book,” the compendium of his self-serving theories of government. Samuel Johnson, the celebrated man of letters, once stated: “The true art of memory is the art of attention.” Nye’s finely etched recollections, based in large part on the journals he has kept for 50 years, bear out this adage. His ability to deftly interweave the details of his personal journey around brief accounts of the epoch in which he lived results in a riveting narrative. In presenting this vibrant tapestry, Nye also manages to display humanity and considerable wit. At the same time, his insights on the changing international scene and observations on the top-tier figures he met along the way are invaluable. Joseph L. Novak is a writer based in Washington, D.C. He is a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society in London and a retiree member of the American Foreign Service Association. A former lawyer, he was a Foreign Service officer for 30 years. A Former CIA Officer Writes What She Knows The Peacock and the Sparrow: A Novel I.S. Berry, Atria Books, 2023, $18.99/ paperback, e-book available, 308 pages. Reviewed by John Limbert Shane Collins’ career is not going well. Shane Collins’ life is not going well. Nearing the end of his time at the CIA, he is posted to Bahrain to work under a 28-year-old boss who—along with the resident U.S. naval commander—insists that Shane find or manufacture evidence that Iran is the source of simmering opposition to the Bahraini royal family. But Shane’s troubles mean pleasure for the reader, especially ones who may have served in Persian Gulf posts and are, like me, inveterate fans of spy fiction full of flawed characters. Author I.S. Berry, a former CIA officer who served in Iraq and lived in Bahrain during the Arab Spring of 2012, follows the lead of John le Carré and David Ignatius to show the unglamorous, seedy, and morally ambiguous sides of intelligence work. She may not have all three elements supposedly required for spy fiction— sex, torture, and good Arabs/Iranians/ Russians—but she still tells a great story. Her characters, including the Arabs, are a believable, complicated mixture of good and evil. The author starts with typical stock characters—the smart, burnt-out, unappreciated CIA officer and his clueless, careerist boss—but builds a fascinating, complex story with multilayered and conflicted characters. Many readers will recognize the narrator, Shane Collins, the spent case officer assigned to Manama for his last tour, from other reading and perhaps from our time in the Foreign Service. Collins says of his situation: “My prior tour in Baghdad had been the latest in a multiyear descent, a descent made worse by the disappearance of a few hundred bucks from my operation revolving funds and an official diagnosis of early-stage liver deterioration. … Manama was a place where spies came to die. Unless you were 28 and a station chief.” About his boss, a CIA whiz kid, he says: “Whitney had arrived a few weeks after me wearing a cheap heavy wool suit in the scorching June heat. Even before attaining station chief status in Bahrain, he’d been dubbed a ‘rising star,’ the coveted term bandied about Headquarters, a title he wore with aspirational dignity like a Brooks Brothers jacket that didn’t quite fit or that he couldn’t afford.” In Berry’s skilled hands, these characters are anything but clichés. We come to care about them and their fates. We care about Rashid, the dissident
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