The Foreign Service Journal, November 2010

18 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 1 0 his health for the sake of enhancing the relationship be- tween America and Japan. An eternal optimist, Reis- chauer believed in the potential of the Japanese people, and his open-minded attitude continues to exert influ- ence today. George R. Packard served as a military intelligence officer and Foreign Service officer. The founder of the Reischauer Center for East Asian Studies at John Hop- kins University, he currently serves as president of the United States-Japan Foundation. He and his wife live in Washington, D.C. François de Callières: A Political Life Laurence E. Pope, ADST-DACOR Diplomats and Diplomacy Series, Republic of Letters Press (The Netherlands), 2010, $49, paperback, 280 pages. François de Callières (1645- 1717) rose from modest provincial origins to a position of power and influence at the court of Louis XIV. Best known as the author of On Negotiating with Sovereigns , a work that has rarely been out of print in English since its publication in 1716, Callières was a skillful, wily ne- gotiator and politician. In this critical biography, the 41st volume in the ADST-DACOR Diplomats and Diplomacy Series, Laurence Pope contrasts the practice of the historical Callières with the high-minded theorist of On Negoti- ating . Drawing on newly discovered archival materi- als, he traces Callières’ long political career, from his maiden clandestine mission to Poland in 1670 to his advocacy of the failed Franco-Jacobite invasion of Scotland in 1708. British diplomatic scholar G.R. Berridge says of this book: “François de Callières is one of the most impor- tant figures in the history of diplomatic thought, and Laurence Pope, who is in the first rank of scholar-diplo- mats, has produced a biography worth of him. It is im- peccably researched, rich in absorbing detail, compre- hensive in its account of his subject’s activities (literary as well as diplomatic), shrewd in its judgments, and written with considerable verve. I enjoyed it immense- ly.” Former U.S. ambassador and FSO Laurence E. Pope served as political adviser to U.S. Central Com- mand General Anthony Zinni in 2000, before which he did stints in counterterrorism and Middle Eastern af- fairs. A graduate of Bowdoin College and the Senior Seminar, he also studied at Princeton and the Armed Forces Staff College. He previously co-edited Letters (1694-1700) of François de Callières to the Marquise d’Huxelles (Mellen, 2004). Kennedy and the Berlin Wall W.R. Smyser, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2010, $17.95, paperback, 256 pages. Kennedy and the Berlin Wall tells the full story of the Berlin Cri- sis that riveted international atten- tion and brought the world to the brink of nuclear warfare, as Soviet and American tanks opposed each other on the streets of Berlin. Posted there as special assistant to U.S. Army General Lucius D. Clay, W.R. Smyser had a unique vantage point on the 33-month confrontation. Drawing on his own experience, as well as on recently opened archives, Smyser frames his account in terms of both the contest between President John F. Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev and the foreign policy education of the new U.S. president. (See the review by Aurelius Fernandez in the February FSJ .) W.R. (Dick) Smyser, a retired FSO, is an adjunct professor in the BMW Center for German and Euro- pean Studies at Georgetown University and also teaches at the Foreign Service Institute. Smyser, who joined the Foreign Service in 1955, served as a political officer in Bonn and in Saigon. He was an adviser to the U.S. delegation to the Paris Peace Talks on Vietnam in 1969, and was detailed to the National Security Council in 1970. He has written 10 books. The most recent are The Humanitarian Conscience: Caring for Others in the Age of Terror (Palgrave-MacMillan, 2003) and How Germans Negotiate: Logical Goals, Practical Solutions (U.S. Institute of Peace Press, 2003). Sotterley, Her People and Their Worlds: Three Hundred Years of a Maryland Plantation David G. Brown, Publishing Concepts, 2010, $17, paperback, 116 pages. This succinct chronicle of a his- toric Maryland plantation sounds initially as though it would appeal to only a very limited audience. The book, however, describes not only the specific plantation and its peo-