The Foreign Service Journal, November 2021

authors; as always, we rely on the authors themselves to bring their books to our attention. This year we’re featuring 19 works of biography and history, 10 books on policy and issues, 19 memoirs, 31 novels and 10 books for children and young adults. Our “potpourri” section sports 11 books that range from tales about food in Peru to a user’s guide to the U.S. Coast Guard Academy. Please note that, unfortunately, because of the sheer volume of volumes, we have had to limit series of more than two books to a single entry. As usual, we also include in this month’s focus a selection of recent books “of related interest” to diplomats and their families that were not written by FS authors. This year’s roundup was assembled with the vital assistance of Publications Coordinator Dmitry Filipoff, Managing Editor Kathryn Owens and Contributing Editor Steven Alan Honley, who wrote the entries for this edition. —Susan Brady Maitra, Senior Editor We are pleased to present this year’s collection of books by Foreign Service authors and their families. THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | NOVEMBER 2021 35 T he Foreign Service Journal is pleased to pres- ent our 20th annual Foreign Service authors roundup in time for holiday orders. Our primary purpose in compiling “InTheir OwnWrite” for publication is to celebrate the wealth of literary talent within the Foreign Service community, and to give our readers the opportunity to support colleagues by sampling their wares. Each entry contains full publication details along with a short commentary. This year our annotated list of books written, edited or translated by Foreign Service personnel and their family members stands at 100, up roughly 25 percent from last year—when, at 78 titles, it had nearly doubled from the year before. With the COVID-19 pandemic and associated lock- downs, we wonder, has the trend now gotten an additional boost from the ease and ubiquity of online communications? This list of books published between 2019 and 2021 is not a comprehensive or definitive record of works by FS BIOGRAPHYAND HISTORY Tecumseh and the Prophet: The Shawnee Brothers Who Defied a Nation Peter Cozzens, Knopf, 2020, $35/hardcover, e-book available, 560 pages. In the first biography of Tecumseh to appear in more than two decades, award-winning historian Peter Coz- zens plumbs the historical record to tell the untold story of the great Shaw- nee leader and his brother, Tenskwatawa, who co-authored the largest and most powerful pan-Indian alliance to challenge the white man’s takeover of America. While Tecumseh was a brilliant diplomat and war leader, Cozzens writes, it was Tenskwatawa, heretofore dismissed as a charlatan and a drunk, who created a vital doctrine of religious and cultural revitalization that unified the disparate tribes of the Old Northwest. As the author states in the preface: “I have sought to redress these and other imbalances in the historical perception of the Shawnee brothers.” The story of the two most significant siblings in Native American history takes us into the chaos and violence that characterized the young republic, when settlers spilled across the Appalachians to bloody effect in their haste to exploit lands won from the British in the War of Independence, and disregarding their rightful Indian owners. “Cozzens’ nuanced portrait stands as one of the best pieces of Native American history I have read,” says journalist and historian S.C. Gwynne, author of the bestsellers Empire of the Summer Moon and Rebel Yell . Peter Cozzens is the author or editor of 17 acclaimed books on the American Civil War and the Indian Wars of the American West. A former Foreign Service officer, he served in Panama, Tijuana, Lima and Washington, D.C. In 2002 he received AFSA’s William R. Rivkin Award for creative dissent by a midlevel FSO. Heroes of World War II: Richard E. Nugent, the 1st Brazilian Fighter Squadron, and 209 Others T. Dennis Reece, Hellgate Press, 2019, $17.95/paperback, e-book available, 414 pages. Why yet another book about World War II? The short answer is to pay tribute to some of the uniformed personnel who helped win the war but have not received proper recognition for their accomplishments. In the case of the 1st Brazilian Fighter Squadron, that statement needs one qualification. The unit has garnered considerable publicity, but most of the material is available only in Portuguese and therefore not accessible to most native English speakers.