The Foreign Service Journal - November 2017

46 NOVEMBER 2017 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL The Year I Was Peter the Great: 1956, Khrushchev, Stalin’s Ghost and a Young American in Russia Marvin Kalb, Brookings Institution Press, 2017, $24.99/hardcover, $14.79/Kindle, 300 pages. In this, his 15th book, the veteran diplo- matic correspondent writes a compelling eyewitness account—a “professional memoir,” as he calls it—of a superpower in upheaval. The year was 1956. Known as “the year of the thaw,” it was the year when Nikita Khrushchev, then the leader of the Soviet Union, denounced his predecessor Joseph Stalin’s despotic leadership. Fluent in Russian and a doctoral candidate at Harvard, Kalb had the opportunity to observe this tumultuous year while working at the U.S. embassy in Moscow. He listened as Russian students attacked communism and threatened rebellion against the Soviet system, and even met with Khrushchev, who playfully nicknamed him Peter the Great. Marvin Kalb is currently a nonresident senior fellow with the Foreign Policy program at Brookings and a senior adviser at the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. The Struggle for Iraq: A View from the Ground Up Thomas M. Renahan, Potomac Books, 2017, $36.95/hardcover, $31.09/Kindle, 536 pages. The Struggle for Iraq is a revealing personal account of Iraq’s fight for democracy and justice, as seen by an American political scientist on the ground. One of the few Americans to serve in all major regions of Iraq, Thomas Renahan led projects to develop democratic institutions, promote democracy and fight corrup- tion throughout the country. In this book he looks at the obstacles the effort faced, high- lighting both achievements and frustrations, and recounts the dangers and hardships the expatriate staff and Iraqis endured as they struggled to build a new country in the midst of violent sectarian conflict. He explains how the United States can help resolve these complex problems and offer hope through recon- ciliation. Thomas M. Renahan is a political scientist, public admin- istrator and international development consultant. He is co- editor of the Daesh Daily newsletter. Q