The Foreign Service Journal, November 2014

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | NOVEMBER 2014 39 cal nostrums. The chapters are presented as briefings by one of the authors on each topic, and anecdotes from their own careers underline their advice in such areas as cross-cultural factors, safety and security, crisis management, local employees and local practice, and more. Ambassador Tibor P. Nagy Jr. is vice provost for international affairs at Texas Tech University. He joined the Foreign Service in 1978 and served in Zambia, Seychelles, Ethiopia, Togo, Camer- oon and Nigeria, in addition to assignments in Washington, D.C. He capped his career with ambassadorships in Guinea (1996- 1999) and Ethiopia (1999-2002). Ambassador Gregory W. Engle joined the Foreign Service in 1981 after a tour as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Korea. He served in Pakistan, Germany, Ethiopia, Cyprus, Malawi and South Africa before being appointed ambassador to Togo in 2003. After serv- ing as minister counselor for management affairs at Embassy Baghdad in 2005, he retired in 2008. MEMOIRS The Kennan Diaries George F. Kennan, edited by Frank Costigliola, W.W. Norton & Co., 2014, $39.95/hardcover, $19.24/Kindle, 768 pages. This landmark collection, spanning 90 years of U.S. history, presents the never-before- published diaries of George F. Kennan (1904- 2005), America’s most famous diplomat. On a hot July afternoon in 1953, George F. Kennan descended the steps of the State Department building as a newly retired man. His career had been tumultuous: early postings in Eastern Europe, followed by Berlin in 1940–1941 and Moscow during the final year of World War II. In 1946, the 42-year-old Kennan authored the “Long Telegram,” a 5,500-word indictment of the Kremlin that became mandatory reading in Washington. And a year later, writing as Mr. X in Foreign Affairs , he outlined “containment,” America’s guiding strategy in the Cold War. What should have been the pinnacle of his career—an ambassadorship in Moscow in 1952—was sabotaged by Kennan himself, deeply frustrated at his failure to ease the Cold War that he had helped launch. But despite that setback, Kennan would become the most respected foreign policy thinker of the 20th century. Over the half-century following his resignation from the Foreign Service, he advised presidents, gave influential lectures and authored 20 books, winning two Pulitzer prizes and two National Book awards in the process. Through it all, Kennan kept a diary. Spanning a staggering 88 years and totaling over 8,000 pages, his journals brimwith keen political andmoral insights, philosophical ruminations, poetry and vivid descriptions. In these pages, we see Kennan rambling through 1920s Europe as a college student, despairing for capitalism in the midst of the Depression, agonizing over the dilemmas of sex and marriage, becoming enchanted and then horrified by Soviet Russia, and developing into America’s foremost Soviet analyst. But it is the later entries that reveal Kennan the gifted author, wise counselor and biting critic of the Vietnam and Iraq wars. They showcase this remarkable man at the height of his singular analytic and expressive powers, before giving way, heartbreakingly, to some of his most humanmoments, as his energy, memory and, finally, his ability to write fade away. Masterfully selected and annotated by historian Frank Costi- gliola, the result is a work of profound intellectual and emotional power. These diaries tell the complete narrative of Kennan’s life in his own intimate and unflinching words and, through him, the arc of world events in the 20th century. Seriously Not All Right: Five Wars in Ten Years Ron Capps, Schaffner Press, 2013, $25, hardcover, 255 pages. A veteran of five wars, Ron Capps recounts the hardships he endured while serving over- seas fromAfghanistan and Iraq to Kosovo and Darfur. His experience as a senior mili- tary intelligence officer and as a Foreign Ser- vice conflict observer is revealed in a wrenchingly honest account of his struggles with post-traumatic stress and depression. Capps explains some of the methods he used to cope with the horrors he witnessed, including creation of a scale to evaluate his well-being from day to day that ranged from “all right” to “seriously not all right”—fromwhich the book’s title is taken. The memoir chronicles his time as a peacekeeper and his long road home after a miraculous return from the brink of suicide. (See Douglas Koneff’s review in the June FSJ .) As Capps explained at an AFSA Book Notes event on July 24, he turned to education in his ongoing recovery. A founder of the Veterans Writing Project in Washington, D.C., he teaches veter- ans the skills to tell their own stories, so that they may, as he puts it, “write their way home.”