The Foreign Service Journal, November 2007

policies that led up to the war in Iraq as well as its after- math. Following his one-year assignment in Iraq as minister-counselor for public affairs, he immersed him- self in the policy dialogues and debates in Washington. This led him, as he states in the introduction to the book, to a “sobering assessment of the connection — as both cause and effect — between Iraq policy and the current domestic political climate, and the impact of this connection on the likely success or failure of our current Iraq policy, as well as, more generally, on the prospects of success for difficult foreign policy chal- lenges in the future.” Schmierer outlines what he sees as the key elements in the Iraq issue, starting with the first Persian Gulf War and, drawing on his personal encounters with Saudis and Iraqis, argues that in the post-9/11 world, Western security interests require an improvement in the politi- cal and economic conditions in much of the Arab world. He believes that the international community has not yet come to terms with the realities of the post-9/11 world, and that as the sole superpower in the world, the U.S. has been uniquely challenged by the attacks. Schmierer also examines the challenges Western demo- cratic principles face in the Information Age. In 2005 Schmierer received the State Department’s Edward R. Murrow Award for Excellence in Public Diplomacy. His 27-year career in the Foreign Service included postings in Riyadh, Berlin and Baghdad. He is currently assigned as a senior adviser at the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy at Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service. HISTORY The Airmen and the Headhunters: A True Story of Lost Soldiers, Heroic Tribesmen and the Unlikeliest Rescue of World War II Judith M. Heimann, Harcourt, 2007, $26.00, hardcover, 289 pages. In November 1944, a team of World War II Army airmen set out in a B-24 bomber on what should have been an easy mission off the Borneo coast. Instead they found themselves facing a Japanese fleet, and were shot down, scattered across the island’s mountainous interior. Then a group of loincloth-wearing natives silently material- ized out of the jungle. Would these Dayak tribesmen turn the starving airmen over to the Japanese occu- piers? The Airmen and the Headhunters is a gripping, you- are-there journey into the remote world and forgotten heroism of the Dayaks. “A fascinating anthropology les- son, delivered with the bonus of a dramatic adventure and a happy ending,” is how Kirkus Reviews character- izes the book, adding that “few other writers could have tracked down this captivating story.” The story told in this book “found me,” says author Judith Heimann. “I stumbled upon the bare bones of the plot while I was researching the biography of an eccentric polymath Englishman, TomHarrisson, whom I had met when he was our next-door neighbor in Borneo.” Her first book, The Most Offending Soul Alive: Tom Harrisson and His Remarkable Life (University of Hawaii, 1999), was made into a docu- mentary for BBC4. Judith Heimann is a retired career FSO and writer who still works on special assignments for the State Department and splits her time between Washington, D.C., and Brussels. With her husband, also an FSO, she spent seven years in Indonesia, the Philippines and Malaysia, and served as consul general in Bordeaux. In Borneo, she learned to speak Malay and became acquainted with many of the characters who appear in her books. Courageous Dissent: How Harry Bingham Defied His Government to Save Lives Robert Kim Bingham Sr., Triune Books, 2007, $20.00, paperback, 159 pages. In 1940, America was not yet involved in World War II and was still trying to maintain neutral relations with Ger- many. State Department policy held that the U.S. could not help people evade the Germans by issuing them visas, forcing many refugees to remain in Nazi- controlled Europe. Harry Bingham, a U.S. vice consul working in Marseilles at the time, was in charge of issu- ing visas. When Varian Fry, the American best known for helping Jews escape during World War II, arrived in Marseilles in 1940, Bingham was already there, stretch- ing the rigorous and anti-Semitic visa criteria. Fry oper- ated under the auspices of the Emergency Rescue Committee, a group backed by Eleanor Roosevelt that 24 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 7