The Foreign Service Journal, November 2014

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | NOVEMBER 2014 55 The State Department: More Than Just Diplomacy George Gedda, AuthorHouse, 2014, $16.95/paperback, $3.99/Kindle, 166 pages. Longtime readers of The Foreign Service Journal will instantly recognize the byline of George Gedda, who for 39 years covered the State Department for the Associated Press and frequently contributed articles to these pages. He is also the author of Cuba: The Audacious Revolution (CreateSpace, 2011). This memoir draws on that impressive body of work to reveal (in the author’s own words) “the good, bad and ugly” about State, but always does so with the respect for the work of professional diplomats that has characterized his entire career. As FSJ Contributing Editor Steven Alan Honley observed in his review of the book (July-August FSJ ): “If anyone can engage a ‘lay’ audience that is at least theoretically interested in a book about the State Department, while offering some deeper insights for those who already know the subject, it is George Gedda.” How Not to Become a Spy: A Memoir of Love at the End of the Cold War Justin Lifflander, Gilbo Shed Books, 2014, $14, paperback, 267 pages. In this comic memoir set at the end of the Cold War, Justin Lifflander proceeds from internships at the FBI and State Department to Moscow, and on to provincial Votkinsk, the birthplace of Tchaikovsky and the finest ICBMs ever made. There he falls in love with his KGB-assigned escort, confounds Soviet authorities with pink lawn flamingos, hot tubs and pet goats, and learns that Russians and Americans are more alike than they realize. In his foreword, the author cites the need to address the cur- rent “crisis of misunderstanding” between the United States and Russia, and urges us to challenge everything we think we know in that effort. He hopes that his story might help. Justin Lifflander holds dual U.S. and Russian citizenship and resides in Moscow with his wife, son and mother-in-law. After Votkinsk, he worked for Hewlett-Packard Russia in Moscow for 20 years and served as business editor for the Moscow Times from 2010 to 2014. Ping-Pong Diplomacy: The Secret History of the Game that Changed the World Nicholas Griffin, Simon & Schuster, 2014, $26/hardcover, $11.89/Kindle, 352 pages. The spring of 1971 heralded the greatest geopo- litical realignment in a generation. After 22 years of antagonism, Beijing and Washington suddenly moved toward a détente—achieved not by politicians, but by ping-pong players. The Western press delighted in the absurdity of the moment and branded it “Ping-Pong Diplomacy.” But for the Chinese, the game was always political, a strategic cog in Mao Zedong’s foreign policy. In Ping-Pong Diplomacy , Nicholas Griffin traces this crucial intersection of sports and society. Griffin, a seasoned journalist and novelist, tells the strange and tragic story of how the game was manipulated at the highest levels. Through a cast of eccentric characters, from spies to hip- pies and from generals obsessed with ping-pong to atom-bomb survivors, Griffin explores how a neglected sport was used to help realign the balance of worldwide diplomacy. The result is a page-turner that will interest not just China hands, but general readers, as well. Pot Shards: Fragments of a Life Lived in CIA, the White House and the Two Koreas Donald P. Gregg, New Academia/Vellum, 2014, $26, paperback, 344 pages. Donald P. Gregg spent 31 years as an opera- tions officer in the CIA and 10 years in the White House under Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. Pot Shards is a window into the Cold War era and the agency’s failings and successes, including Gregg’s role in saving the life of KimDae Jung, a Korean political dissident who later, as South Korea’s presi- dent, won the Nobel Peace Prize. As he recounts here, the author returned to Seoul in 1989 to serve as U.S. ambassador for four years. And in retirement, he has made six trips to Pyongyang (most recently in April), stressing dialogue over demonization. Gregg colorfully describes his CIA tours in Japan, Burma, Vietnam and South Korea. His experiences in Vietnam illustrate the difficulties of speaking truth to power, including sharp-edged encounters with Robert McNamara and Curtis LeMay, among others. This is an ADST-DACOR Diplomats and Diplomacy Book.