The Foreign Service Journal, November 2004

become directly involved in the aftermath of a military coup and the cover-up of human rights violations in a South American country. Like his earlier work, also set in the fic- tional South American country of Colonia, this story has all the intrigue of a spy thriller but is at the same time about ordinary Foreign Service folk, and gives a straightforward look into their world. Morris is from Des Moines, Iowa, and has a Ph.D. degree in physics from Iowa State University. After teaching and doing research, he joined the Foreign Service in 1974, and worked on nuclear nonprolifera- tion, science cooperation and environmental protection issues in Washington, D.C., Paris, Bonn, Buenos Aires and Madrid. He retired in 1992. He is the author of Diplomatic Affairs (2002), Diplomatic Relations (2002), and Diplomatic Circles (1999). MEMOIRS OF FOREIGN SERVICE LIFE Seeing Arabs through an American School: A Beirut Memoir, 1998-2001 Robert F. Ober Jr., Xlibris Corporation, 2003, $21.99, paperback, 284 pages. In 1998, in the midst of Israeli air attacks, Hezbollah resistance, a Syrian occupation and local sectarianism, Robert F. Ober Jr. was appointed presi- dent of the International College of Beirut, with a mandate to revive the school’s American attributes. This book, which details the history of the college, a private institution serving 3,500 Arab students from preschool through high school, is the story of his expe- rience. Robert Ober, a retired FSO, served in Athens, New Delhi, Hamburg, Moscow, Warsaw and Washington, D.C., and was a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. F O C U S N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 4 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 37 T HE R EMINGTON