The Foreign Service Journal, November 2009

N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 9 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 31 ability of love to withstand all odds and flourish. This is not to dis- count the other, numerous merits of the memoir, including tales from officialdom and family life that are well documented and 140 excellent photographs. James O’Donald Mays grew up on a cotton farm in Georgia and served as the editor of a small-town weekly newspaper before the Army plucked him up and set him down in Southampton, England, to assist with preparations for D-Day. There Mays met a Land Army girl, Mary, who would soon become his wife (despite her father’s objec- tions). After the war, the pair returned to Georgia be- fore Mays decided to go abroad once more to report on Robert Louis Stevenson’s travels in the Cevennes. Soon after, Mays joined the Foreign Service and served in Israel, France and Finland. Upon retiring, the couple relocated to England and settled into village life. Mays now runs a small publishing business, New Forest Leaves. To purchase this book, go to www.newforest leaves.com . Witness to a Changing World David D. Newsom, New Academia Publishing, 2008, $28, paperback, 388 pages. In Witness to a Changing World , part of the ADST-DACOR Diplomats and Diplomacy Series, the late Ambassador David New- som describes three decades of diplomatic experience during which he was often at the center of historic events. The book, which Amb. Newsom completed in Jan- uary 2008 at the age of 90, just prior to his death, is “a terrific read,” wrote retired FSO Roscoe Suddarth in a review for the Journal (September 2009). “Both per- sonal and serious, it is a great admixture of sage obser- vations and amusing anecdotes, including astute personal observations on many world figures. It also includes many delicious sketches illustrating Newsom’s superb comic sense.” Perpetually “at the eye of the storm,” as the New Yorker wrote of him in 1980, Amb. Newsom was in- volved in handling the Iranian Revolution and hostage