The Foreign Service Journal, November 2010

34 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 faces in the Middle East are daunting, Hunter ably ex- plains how to deal with them. Retired FSO Robert Hunter is a senior adviser at the RAND Corporation in Washington, D.C. He served as U.S. ambassador to NATO and U.S. repre- sentative to the Western European Union under Pres- ident Bill Clinton. He has also served as a foreign policy adviser to many government officials, including Presi- dent Jimmy Carter and Defense Secretary William Cohen. Working the Night Shift: Women in India’s Call Center Industry Reena Patel, Stanford University Press, 2010, $21.95, paperback, 208 pages. Almost every American has called an 800 number for assis- tance with electronics, credit cards or airline ticketing. In Working the Night Shift , Reena Patel explores the lives of the women at the other end of those calls. Patel’s book — the result of months of research at call centers in and around Mum- bai — analyzes how call center jobs affect employees. The author draws on interviews with dozens of work- ers to explain the cultural and familial pressures dis- couraging many Indian women from working at call centers. Due to the time difference between the cen- ters and the primarily American customers they serve, these women (many of whom have never before held jobs or even been outside of their homes past 8 p.m.) must work night shifts — or, as detractors call it, the “hooker shift.” Through the personal stories of a variety of women — from a single mother working to afford her rent to a middle-class daughter earning spending money — Patel creates an intimate picture of a liberating but fre- quently dangerous profession, one which “brings with it new challenges and new opportunities for women workers.” This well-written book will certainly give readers something to think about the next time they call to reserve a plane ticket or pay a bill. The first-generation American daughter of an Indian family, Reena Patel is a feminist scholar and Foreign Service officer. After graduating with a degree in busi- ness from the University of Massachusetts at Boston, she served as a Peace Corps Volunteer. She joined the Foreign Service this year and currently serves as a po- litical officer in Madrid. The Twisted Sisterhood: Unraveling the Dark Legacy of Female Friendships Kelly Valen, Ballantine Books, 2010, $25, hardcover, 256 pages. When FS spouse and writer Kelly Valen’s essay, “My Sorority Pledge? I Swore Off Sisterhood,” was published in the New York Times’ Modern Love column inDecember 2007, she was overwhelmed by the volume and intensity of the re- sponse. The piece about an ugly encounter with soror- ity sisters struck a chord with thousands of women who carried powerful impressions and memories about fe- male-inflicted wounds, and also prompted protest from women who felt such an airing of “dirty laundry” was somehow anti-woman. Inspired, Valen embarked on a program of research and writing, including interviews with more than 3,000 women. In this book, she presents the results of her in- vestigations, exposing the hidden and enduring fallout of seminal female relationships. “But while the survey re- sults have more than confirmed that there is widespread social anxiety, wariness and doubts about the emotional safety of women — among women of all ages, back- grounds and perspectives,” says Valen, “my intent was for The Twisted Sisterhood to fill a void by not only opening this deeply emotional topic for discussion, but by raising consciousness and calling for a more mindful civility.” Kelly Valen earned her J.D. from the University of California at Davis, where she was executive editor of the UC Davis Law Review . Since leaving the legal profes- sion in 2004, she has published essays and commentaries in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, San Fran- cisco Chronicle Magazine, Chicago Tribune and other publications. She lives with her FSO husband and their four children in Bangkok and San Francisco. Grand Strategies: Literature, Statecraft and World Order Charles Hill, Yale University Press, 2010, $27.50, hardcover, 384 pages. Grand Strategies: Literature, Statecraft, and World Order ex- amines statecraft through litera- ture, a relatively unique perspect- ive in international relations. Charles Hill reviews many of the world’s great works to provide a view of interna- tional relations through a humanities-focused lens rather