The Foreign Service Journal, November 2015

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | NOVEMBER 2015 33 This new edition, the 55th volume in the ADST-DACOR Dip- lomats and Diplomacy Series, brings readers up to the time of the Rogers Act, consular and diplomatic integration and the formation of the professional U.S. Foreign Service. Kennedy, a retired FSO and Korean War veteran, was a consular officer for many years. He served in Germany, Saudi Arabia, the former Yugoslavia, South Vietnam, Greece, South Korea and Italy. On retiring in 1985, he founded the Foreign Affairs Oral History Program and today serves as its director at the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training. He was the 2014 recipient of AFSA’s Lifetime Contributions to American Diplomacy Award. (Find his book talk at www.afsa.org/afsa- videos.) A Short History of Evolution: A Theme and Variations Carl Coon, Humanist Press, 2015, $10.99/paperback; $2.99/Kindle, 64 pages. In A Short History of Evolution , Ambassa- dor (ret.) Carl Coon tracks several billion years of human and natural history, argu- ing that there is no need for humans to continue to turn to magic and superstition to explain how we got to where we are. Instead, Coon demonstrates, everything that has ever happened has occurred within a natural order of change. He discusses the emergence of homo sapiens more than 50,000 years ago, and how natural selection has continued to shape the societ- ies we live in and the civilizations we create. In Coons’ view, these natural biological processes balance war with altruism. He argues that humans cannot survive without both phenomena. This short, informative reader is set up like a musical composi- tion, with themes and variations weaving together to produce a story in 64 pages that covers the intellectual connection between entropy and evolution, the origin of life on earth, natural selec- tion, our earliest human ancestors, the Neolithic and modern periods, and theories of morality. The book will serve as a good introduction for those just beginning to ponder the question “How did we get here?” and a summary for those who have already delved into the scientific literature but would like to see it synthesized. Carl Coon spent his Foreign Service career in the Middle East and South Asia, and was U.S. ambassador to Nepal from 1981 to 1984. His previous books include Culture Wars and the Global Village and One Planet, One People . Anti-Americanism in Democratizing South Korea David Straub, Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, 2015, $18.95/paperback, 246 pages. In 2002, David Straub was an FSO serving in Seoul when massive anti-American pro- tests erupted there. In what was believed to be one of the most pro-American countries in the world, hundreds of thousands of Koreans demonstrated against the United States, tearing American flags, staging cyber- attacks and taking one American hostage. How did it come to this? Straub answers this question with an account of the complicated relationship between the United States and Korea since the American occupation of 1945-1948, detailing multiple incidents that, building upon one another, would prove to be future diplomatic sticking points. The last straw, it seems, was the “Highway 56” tragedy, a 2002 traffic accident involving two American soldiers that resulted in the deaths of two Korean schoolgirls. When the soldiers were acquitted of any wrongdoing by the United States Forces Korea, outraged Koreans took to the streets. Straub addresses multiple ways in which popular anti-Amer- ican sentiment was expressed, discusses whether something similar could occur again and concludes with policy recommen- dations for increasing mutual understanding between the two nations today. During a 30-year Foreign Service career, David Straub served as head of the political section in Seoul from 1999 to 2002. He worked on the formation of the Six-Party Talks focused on North Korea’s nuclear program (2002-2004) and was Japan country desk director (2004-2006), co-leading U.S. delegation talks with Japan on realignment and U.S. military bases. He retired in 2006 and is currently associate director of the Korea Program at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford University. Over There: A Doughboy in France 1918 William S. Shepard, Seth B. Cutler Press, 2014, $2.99/Kindle, 75 pages. In this e-book, William S. Shepard pres- ents the notebook his father, Robinson Shepard, kept as an American soldier during the First World War. This priceless heirloom has been in his family for years and provides a firsthand account of Robinson’s experience fight-