The Foreign Service Journal, November 2012

26 NOVEMBER 2012 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL David Epstein joined the Foreign Service in 2007. His first post- ing was San Salvador, and he is now serving as vice consul in Jerusalem. America and the Vatican: Trading Information after WWII Robert F. Illing, History Publishing Company, 2011, $25.95, hardcover, 260 pages. Fifteen years after World War II, the United States opened a small mission in the Vati- can and Robert Illing, a non-Catholic and career FSO, was posted there as chargé d’affaires. America and the Vatican is his account of that experi- ence. “My assignment to the Vatican began as an office joke at the American embassy in Belgrade, where I was working as a second secretary in the political section,” the author begins his absorbing and very well-told story. “The very idea of an American diplomat barrelling around the Vatican—a place whose name was as great as was our ignorance about it—unleashed days of amusing and flighty speculation. The thought of our man blithely discussing fine points of theology in his impeccable high-school Latin with a group of venerable cardinals was one of the main tableaux of our wild fancies.” What he found and came to understand was the dual nature of the Vatican, as a city-state political entity and as the center of the Roman Catholic Church. Illing sheds light not only on the Vati- can’s relationship with the United States but its relationship with the rest of the world. He uses historical anecdotes to illuminate the U.S.-Vatican relationship. During a 25-year diplomatic career, Robert F. Illing served in Mexico, Yugoslavia, the Holy See and Portugal. He now lives in northern Portugal, where he enjoys gardening and producing white wine. Fifty Years of U.S. Africa Policy: Reflections of Assistant Secretaries for African Affairs and U.S. Embassy Officials, 1958-2008 Claudia E. Anyaso, ed., Xlibris, 2011, $19.99, paperback, 269 pages. Editor Claudia Anyaso’s compilation of assistant secretaries’ accounts and FSOs’ stories is a remarkable work of historical and geographical breadth that captures the trials, tribulations and rewards of diplomats working in one of the world’s most challenging regions. The book, a volume in the ADST Memoirs and Occasional Papers series, reflects America’s own evolution, as well. Assistant Secretary Joseph Satterthwaite (1958-1961) discusses racial inequality in America as he evaluates prejudice in Africa. During the Cold War, some officials struggled with America’s focus on Soviet influence rather than regional civil rights. The retrospective view of these essays reveals the repercussions of some of these policies and also provides a painful glimpse into the slow realization of, for instance, the prevalence and horror of the AIDS epidemic. Diplomacy in Africa is not usually a glamorous job, and despite the fortitude and passion of these figures, it remains a challenge to get African issues to the seventh floor of the State Department. The struggles this book describes are continuous, but throughout them all, progress is evident. Claudia Anyaso served for more than 40 years with the former U.S. Information Agency and the Department of State. Her overseas postings include Haiti, Nigeria (twice) and Niger. She was a member of the Implementation Planning Team for the U.S. Unified Command for Africa and served as director of the Office of Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs in the Africa Bureau. The Captain Who Burned His Ships: Captain Thomas Tingey, USN, 1750-1829 Gordon S. Brown, Naval Institute Press, 2011, $28.95, hardcover, 224 pages. The Captain Who Burned His Ships is the first biography of CaptainThomas Tingey, a key figure in the development of the early U.S. Navy. Arriving in America in 1780 after a short service in the Royal Navy, Tingey built the Navy Yard in Washington from scratch into one of the most vital shipyards in the country. After command- ing it for 25 years, he was then obliged to burn it down in 1814 to prevent it from falling into the hands of British invaders. Author Gordon Brown also tells the story of the evolution of the young naval force, from an object of partisan discord to an honored defender of a growing and increasingly self-confident nation. Brown considers Tingey’s contributions to naval proce- dures and practices, his civic role in the budding city of Washing- ton, D.C., the dramatic events of 1814 and the rebuilding of the yard as a major technical center for the navy. Gordon S. Brown had a 35-year career in the Foreign Service,