The Foreign Service Journal, November 2018

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | NOVEMBER 2018 53 OF RELATED INTEREST U.S. Consular Representation in Britain Since 1790 Nicholas M. Keegan, Anthem Press, 2018, $115/hardcover, $31.01/ paperback, $29.99/Kindle, 250 pages. This meticulously researched book draws extensively on archives in the United States and the United Kingdom, and includes many previously unpublished photographs. It is in three parts, the first focused on the creation of the State Department, the Consular Service and the Foreign Service. While FSJ readers may be familiar with that history, Nicholas M. Keegan’s treatment offers many less-familiar details. Parts II and III concentrate on the U.S. consulates and the people who have served in them in Britain and pre-independence Ireland. The foreword is by AFSA President Ambassador Barbara Ste- phenson, who served as the first female deputy chief of mission and chargé d’affaires at Embassy London from 2010 to 2013. Nicholas M. Keegan spent much of his career in the civil service in Edinburgh, mainly in the fields of education, home affairs and criminal justice. He was awarded a Ph.D. in politics fromDurham University in 2005. War on Peace: The End of Diplomacy and the Decline of American Influence Ronan Farrow, W.W. Norton & Company, 2018, $27.95/hardcover, $14.99/Kindle, 424 pages. Drawing on his experience as an inves- tigative journalist and a former State Department official, Ronan Farrow profiles several recent standard bearers of traditional state- craft, with the greatest focus on the late Richard Holbrooke, as he illuminates one of the most consequential and poorly understood changes in American history: the sidelining of the Foreign Service. Drawing on newly unearthed documents, and richly informed by rare interviews with warlords, whistleblowers and policymakers—including every living former Secretary of State from Henry Kissinger to Rex Tillerson— War on Peace makes a powerful case for an endangered profession. Ronan Farrow is an investigative journalist who writes for The New Yorker and makes documentaries for HBO. See the October FSJ for a review of this book. The Statesman: Reflections on a Life Guided by Civility, Strategic Leadership and the Lessons of History David Abshire and James Kitfield, Rowman & Littlefield, 2018, $45/ hardcover, $31.45/Kindle, 220 pages. The late David Abshire, co-founder of the Center for Strategic and Interna- tional Studies, was an adviser to several presidents. He served as a special counselor to President Ronald Reagan and was the U.S. permanent representative to NATO from 1983 to 1987. In this extraordinary final love letter to his country, published posthumously, Abshire urges his fellow citizens to reclaimAmeri- can exceptionalism by reinvigorating a politics of lively, robust debate within a framework of respect and civil behavior—before it is too late. James Kitfield, who edited Abshire’s memoir for publication, is a senior fellow at the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress, the author of three books on national security and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Kings and Presidents: Saudi Arabia and the United States since FDR Bruce Riedel, Brookings Institution Press, 2017, $25.99/hardcover, $13.06/Kindle, 272 pages. Saudi Arabia and the United States have been partners since 1943, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt met with two future Saudi monarchs. Based largely on economic interests, the relationship has been endur- ing but rarely smooth. Here is an insider’s account based on declassified documents, memoirs by both Saudis and Ameri- cans, eyewitness reports and the author’s own 30-year involve- ment in the Middle East. As the Atlantic Council’s Barbara Slavin notes, “Few if any Americans have the depth of experience of Bruce Riedel in dealing with the volatile neighborhood inhab- ited by Saudi Arabia.” A senior adviser on South Asia and the Middle East to the last