The Foreign Service Journal, November 2005

of interest to the general reader. Candid and tren- chant, and sometimes at odds with conventional wis- dom, this book is never boring. Hawthorne Mills retired from the Foreign Service in 1985. He and his wife Diana live on a sheep farm in New Zealand. My Life in Capitals: A Memoir of Life in the Foreign Service Bobbie Bergesen, Hellgate Press, 2004, $16.95, paperback, 191 pages. The title says it all. Born in Vienna, the daughter of a U.S. diplo- mat, the author grew up in several different countries and, following graduation from col- lege, married a Foreign Service officer. Bobbie Bergesen has truly lived her whole life in capitals. Written in an unassuming style with verve and directness, her memoir is an account of her travels and experiences in Port-au- Prince, Phnom Penh, Lisbon, Rangoon, Budapest and Bangkok. The format is, as she explains in the first chap- ter, a natural one: “I explain where in the world — literal- ly —I happen to be, followed by the story, article or poem I wrote, either at the time or later.” Bobbie Bergesen worked briefly in the Office of Strategic Services and in the State Department before marrying Foreign Service officer Alf Bergesen in 1951. She accompanied her husband to a variety of diplomatic posts, primarily in Europe and Asia, until he retired in 1984. After his death in 1995, she remarried and cur- rently lives in Florida. Although this is Bergesen’s first book, her writing has been published before. Many of the stories in My Life in Capitals appeared first as articles in publications such as Florida Today , The Georgia Journal , Great Expeditions and American Diplomacy. My Highway of Life Had Many Detours: Worldwide Adventures John Morris Fenley, Xlibris, 2005, $18.69, paperback, 261 pages. This memoir is a collection of 84 stories depicting episodes and expe- riences in a life lived in many parts of the U.S. and around the world. Full of lively detail, the stories often provide humorous insight into life and diplomacy; the stories on ants encountered in Africa and one titled “Is a Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich a Cross-cultural Affair?” are exemplary. Not simply an exercise in recollection, however, the author has writ- ten to set the record straight for his own conscience. Accordingly, each story is accompanied by a reflective afterthought. The book is well-organized, with the sto- ries grouped in four parts: youth, Nevada, Africa and in-between. After teaching at Cornell University, John Morris Fenley joined USAID in 1961. He spent the next 16 years in Africa, first with USAID and then with the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, helping underdeveloped countries to start or improve agricul- tural extension services for their farmers. A Simpler Time: Stories from a Vanished Era Eric V. Youngquist, Voyageur Publishing Co., 2005, $22.50, hardcover, 355 pages. A Simpler Time presents a warm, nostalgic view of life in the urban American Midwest of the 1930s and 1940s. Though the Great De- pression caused dislocation and hardship to many fam- ilies, it was also a time when children had glorious free time, without constant supervision by adults, and when that time was usually spent outdoors. The story’s set- ting is Dearborn, Mich., “Ford’s Town,” where the author, of Swedish immigrant stock, grew up. As we follow his life from youth to military service and gradu- ation from college, we come to appreciate the vast gap that separates that simpler way of life from the frenet- ic ethos of 21st-century urban America. Eric Youngquist joined the Foreign Service in 1954 and served in consular affairs for 12 years, with postings in Thailand, Finland and Washington, D.C. He resigned in 1967 to embark on a career in corporate law. He is the author (under the pseudonym Gilbert D. Visconti) of a suspense novel, The Joint Venture (Voyageur Publishing Co., 2003). n To order any book listed here, see page 48. 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 47