The Foreign Service Journal, November 2016

42 NOVEMBER 2016 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL American Reckoning: The Vietnam War and Our National Identity Christian Appy, Penguin Books, 2015, $18/paperback, 334 pages. “Few people understand the centrality of the VietnamWar to our situation as much as Christian Appy,” says documentary filmmaker Ken Burns. “In his sure hands, we have a blueprint that documents the fundamental changes that divisive war ushered in.” In Ameri- can Reckoning , Appy explores the war’s impact on U.S. culture, national identity and foreign policy from the dawn of the Cold War to the Global War on Terror—in the process demonstrating how vexed and conflicted the legacies of Vietnam remain. Christian G. Appy, a professor of history at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, is the author of two previous books on the VietnamWar and editor of the series Culture, Politics and the Cold War. His book Patriots won the Massachusetts Book Award for nonfiction. Why America Misunderstands the World Paul Pillar, Columbia University Press, 2016, $28.99/hardcover, $28.99/Ebook, 224 pages. “This book should be required read- ing for all presidential candidates,” says retired Ambassador Gordon S. Brown in his review of Why America Misun- derstands the World in the June FSJ . Paul Pillar explores th e reasons Americans’ perspectives about the world and foreign policy have developed very differently from other nations and assesses its effect on U. S. policymaking. “Pillar has skew- ered the conventional wisdom on a host of issues where our misperceptions of the threat, the motivations of others or even of our own national interest have led to flawed policies,” says Brown. Paul Pillar is a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence and at the Center for Security Studies in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. During a 28-year career in U.S. intelligence he held numerous senior positions, including chief of analytic units at the CIA, and was an original member of the Analytic Group in the National Intelligence Council. When In the Arab World: An Insider's Guide to Living and Working with Arab Culture Rana F. Nejem, Whitefox, 2016, $24.99/ paperback, $9.59/Kindle, 248 pages. This book opens with an Arab proverb: “Ask the experienced rather than the learned.” The fact that the author possesses deep personal knowledge of the customs and traditions of the Middle East makes When In the Arab World essential reading for anyone intending to live, work or study in that region. Rana Nejem, who regularly speaks on the subject of cross-cul- tural communications and cultural intelligence, began her career as a broadcast journalist with Jordan Television and later worked with CNN before running the public diplomacy and communi- cations section of the British Embassy in Amman for 18 years. In 2013 she founded her own company, Yarnu—named for the Arabic word meaning to do something with calmness and seren- ity—to coach, train and advise business executives, diplomats and officials. African Americans in U.S. Foreign Policy: From the Era of Frederick Douglass to the Age of Obama Linda Heywood, Allison Blakely, Charles Stith and Joshua C. Yesnowitz, University of Illinois Press, 2015, $25/paperback, $14.87/Kindle, 264 pages. This book originated in a conference on the role African Americans have played in U.S. foreign policy throughout history that attracted numerous schol- ars and former diplomats. The essays collected from this event chronicle the evolution of the role played by African-American elites and the African-American community as Foreign Service officers and ambassadors of a country that denied them their full social and political rights. ( See retired Ambassador Charles Ray’s review in the January-February FSJ . ) Linda Heywood is a professor of African-American studies and history at Boston University and author of Contested Power in Angola: 1840s to the Present . Allison Blakely is Professor Emeritus of History at Boston University. Charles Stith is an adjunct profes- sor of international relations and director of the African Presiden- tial Center at Boston University. Joshua C. Yesnowitz has lectured at Boston University and Suffolk University.