The Foreign Service Journal, November 2005

take possession of the decoder with the help of a disaf- fected high-ranking member of the Naurlandian gov- ernment. Soviet embassy security operatives, sand- storms, U.S. bureaucratic turf battles, treacherous desert tribal politics, paid assassins and the machina- tions of the ambitious U.S. ambassador all stand between Paul and the decoder. Will Sutter is a retired FSO. During a career of more than 20 years he served as press and cultural attaché in Bangkok, Vientiane, Moscow and Nouak- chott, and also lived for several years in Rome and Vienna. He now lives in Frederick, Md., and, since retirement, has devoted himself to writing. This is his first published novel. MEMOIRS OF FOREIGN SERVICE LIFE Behind Embassy Walls: The Life and Times of an American Diplomat Brandon Grove, University of Missouri Press, 2005, $34.95, hardcover, 328 pages. “When American foreign policy is working well, you’ll find a few top-quality diplomats like Brandon Grove employed in the nation’s service. Behind Embassy Walls explains why. Here are the sights and sounds, the clashes of ideas and egos, in a fascinating Foreign Service career vividly depicted.” This is what former Secretary of State George P. Shultz says about Brandon Grove’s memoirs. Over a distinguished 35-year career, Grove played a role in key events of the Cold War era. He opened the first U.S. embassy in East Germany in 1974, served as consul general in Jerusalem in the early 1980s during the war in Lebanon and was ambassador to Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo) during three years of Mobutu Sese Seko’s infamous reign. Woven into the narrative are observations about the impact of McCarthyism, the relative advantages of career versus political appointees to ambassadorships; the training of ambassadors; lawyers as diplomats; CIA stations at U.S. embassies; and crisis management in Washington, notably the interagency task force he led in 1992 for the relief of the humanitarian crisis in Somalia. Brandon Grove is a career ambassador who served nine American presidents and 12 Secretaries of State. Today he lives and works in Washington, D.C. Behind Embassy Walls is an ADST-DACOR Diplomats and Diplomacy Book, and has been nominated for the American Academy of Diplomacy’s 2005 Book Award. Coming of Age in Arabia: A Memoir of Aden before the Terror Tom Henighan, Penumbra Press, 2004, $29.95, hardcover, 243 pages. Tom Henighan went to Aden in 1957 as vice consul, his first posting as a newly-minted Foreign Service officer. His memoir of the follow- ing two years, engaging and laced with ironical obser- vation, will not only entertain, but will sharpen the reader’s sense of how far western policy has to go before it can “come of age” in Arabia. The core of the book is a lively mix of stories, some aris- ing from the author’s professional duties and some from his personal relationships. But as his account proceeds, Henighan gradually recognizes in his earlier observations of that seemingly placid world of long ago, callow and naïve though they may have been, symptoms of the disor- der and violence that have characterized much of the his- tory of the region in the four decades since. Currently professor emeritus of English at Carleton University in Ottawa, Tom Henighan is the author of three books on Canadian arts and culture that are required reading in various university courses, three pub- lished novels, two collections of short stories and a vol- ume of poetry. A Bed of Roses: An American Woman’s Memoirs of Turkey Anna Maria Malkoç, eBookstand Books, 2005, $24.95, paperback, 274 pages. In 1952, Anna Maria Jones asks her husband Selahattin Malkoç what life is really like in Turkey, his homeland, where he — with his young wife and baby F O C U S N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 5 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 41 Continued on page 46