The Foreign Service Journal, November 2014

52 NOVEMBER 2014 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL What Diplomats Do: The Life and Work of Diplomats Brian Barder, Rowman & Littlefield, 2014, $44, hardcover, 216 pages. What Diplomats Do follows a fictional Brit- ish diplomat from his application to join the Foreign Office through different postings at home and overseas, culminating with his appointment as ambassador and retire- ment. Each chapter contains case studies, based on the author’s 30-year diplomatic experience, such as the role of the diplomat during emergency crises and as part of a national delegation to a permanent conference such as the United Nations. “Barder’s account is informative, humanly sympathetic, dis- tinctly British and thoroughly engaging,” says Alan K. Henrikson of The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. Sir Brian Barder is an honorary visiting fellow at the University of Leicester Department of Politics and International Relations. During a distinguished career in the British Diplomatic Service he served as ambassador to Ethiopia, the Republic of Benin and Poland, and as high commissioner to Nigeria and Australia. American Diplomacy Paul Sharp and Geoffrey Wiseman, eds., Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 2012, $62.93, paperback, 233 pages. As the essays highlight, American diplo- macy is in the midst of a period of uncer- tainty because the country’s international position is changing and the character of international relations may be undergoing a transformation. Paul Sharp is professor and head of political science at the University of Minnesota Duluth and co-edits The Hague Journal of Diplomacy . Geoffrey Wiseman is professor of the practice of international relations at the University of Southern California. A former Australian diplomat, he also worked as a program officer at the Ford Foundation. OF RELATED INTEREST Lost Enlightenment: Central Asia’s Golden Age from the Arab Conquest to Tamerlane S. Frederick Starr, Princeton University Press, 2013, $39.50/hardcover, $23.17/Kindle, 680 pages. In this sweeping and richly illustrated his- tory, S. Frederick Starr tells the fascinating but largely unknown story of Central Asia’s medieval enlightenment, exploring its rise and the competing theories about the cause of its eventual demise. Lost Enlightenment recounts how, between 800 and 1200, Central Asia led the world in trade and economic development, the size and sophistication of its cities, the refinement of its arts and, above all, in the advancement of knowledge in many fields. Central Asians gave algebra its name, calculated the earth’s diameter with unprecedented precision, wrote the books that later defined European medicine and penned some of the world’s greatest poetry. S. Frederick Starr is the founding chairman of the Central Asia- Caucasus Institute and Silk Road Studies Program, a joint trans- Atlantic research center affiliated with the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at the Johns Hopkins University in Washington and the Institute for Security and Development Policy in Stockholm. He is an adjunct professor of European and Eurasian studies at Johns Hopkins’ School of Advanced Interna- tional Studies. Informal Ambassadors: American Women, Transatlantic Marriages, and Anglo-American Relations Dana Cooper, The Kent State University Press, 2014, $49.56/hardcover, $43.99/Kindle, 195 pages. From 1865 to 1945, a number of American heiresses wed members of the British aris- tocracy and, without the formal title of diplo- mat or member of Parliament, came to exert significant influence in the male-dominated arena of foreign affairs and international politics. In Informal Ambassadors , author Dana Cooper traces the experiences of five of these women: Lady Jennie Jerome Churchill, Mary Endicott Chamberlain, Vicereine Mary Leiter Curzon, Duchess Consuelo Vanderbilt Balsan and Lady Nancy Astor. As the wives of leading members of the British aristoc- racy, they had uncompromised and unlimited access to the eyes