The Foreign Service Journal, November 2016

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | NOVEMBER 2016 37 ments from Hacker’s life and work, Far Away Places was printed and bound by The Book Arts Conservatory in Wash- ington, D.C. The tanned boar-skin cover bears the Great Seal of the United States stamped in 23kt gold. The initial print run of 100 is for family members, co-workers and select libraries. A more affordable e-book version is contemplated. Michael Hacker was born in Springfield, Missouri, in 1938. He served in the U.S. Navy and went on to join the Peace Corps. He joined the Foreign Service at USAID in 1968 and served in Vietnam, the Philippines, Ecuador and Panama. He retired in 1996 after 30 years of government service. Paying Calls in Shangri-La: Scenes from a Woman’s Life in American Diplomacy Judith Heimann, Ohio University Press, 2016, $26.95/paperback, 246 pages. A unique look into Foreign Service life, Judith Heimann’s memoir tracks the author’s transition from Foreign Service spouse to Foreign Service officer to fre- quently rehired annuitant over the course of a 50-year career. It is an exciting and educational read, particularly for anyone interested in a diplomatic career. Heimann begins with an account of her arrival as an FSO in Mobutu Sese Seko’s Zaire in 1978, an assignment she had not sought. To her surprise, as she tells it, colleagues and Congolese dissident politicians there help her fulfill her wish to become a diplomat in her own right. The story then flashes back to 1958, when she accompanied her husband, FSO John Heimann, on assignment to Jakarta and began learning the subtle arts of diplomacy. From there, her own career experi- ences take the reader through Asia, Africa and Europe. Heimann’s intent in writing this memoir, a volume in the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training’s “Diplomats and Diplomacy” series, is to allow the reader “to go into the world as a career diplomat or as part of a diplomatic family.” Judith Heimann has spent most of her life in the Foreign Service. She is the author of The Most Offending Soul Alive (1999), a biography of the controversial English cultural anthropologist Tom Harrisson (1911-1976), and The Airmen and the Headhunters (2007). She later co-authored the award- winning PBS documentary about the latter book. The Incidental Oriental Secretary and Other Tales of Foreign Service Richard L. Jackson, Hamilton Books, 2016, $29.95/paperback, 260 pages. Described by the author as an “anti-mem- oir,” The Incidental Oriental Secretary seeks to demonstrate and make sense of the changing nature of American diplomacy over the span of a career. From “the days when diplomats used shoe leather to meet contacts over green tea in the medina or, yes, even on the golf course” to the high-security environment that now characterizes the Foreign Service, this book tells the story of the transformation of diplomatic practice in just the past few decades. In his foreword, retired Ambassador Frank G. Wisner describes the book as “rich in detail, superbly written and often gloriously funny.” Because he regards memoirs to be the least credible of genres, Jackson shares memorable or funny anecdotes and how they related to the wider world at the time rather than relying on a surely faulty memory to recall every event in his own life. While his accounts of working across cultures are often full of humor, Jackson also portrays the tragedy he has witnessed in some countries, showing just howmultifaceted professional diplomacy truly is. This volume is part of the Association for Dip- lomatic Studies and Training’s “Diplomats and Diplomacy” series. During a 30-year Foreign Service career, Richard L. Jackson served in Somalia, Libya, Greece, the United Nations, Morocco and Washington, D.C. He later served as president of Anatolia Col- lege inThessaloniki for 11 years before becoming an international consultant on higher education and a freelance writer. FICTION AND POETRY Give Me the Word: Advent and Other Poems, 2000-2015 Laura Merzig Fabrycky, Saar River Press, 2015, $11.99/paperback, 102 pages. While many families send out holiday- season newsletters about happenings and achievements from the past year, Laura Merzig Fabrycky prefers to tuck original poems into her Christmas cards. In Give Me the Word: Advent and Other Poems, 2005-2015 , she has col- lected these creations that are—as Heather Morton, who has