The Foreign Service Journal, November 2021

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | NOVEMBER 2021 37 of government under three presidents, including service as President George H.W. Bush’s deputy chief of staff. Civil War Virginians: 50 Characters from the “Old Dominion” in the Civil War Gene Schmiel, independently published, 2021, $14.99/paperback, e-book available, 227 pages. From America’s founding, Virginians looked upon themselves as a unifying link between North and South, even as sectionalism grew in the mid-19th century. Ironically, as Gene Schmiel explains in this book, the state’s reluctance to leave the Union led to the secession and admission to the Union in 1863 of what would become the new state of West Virginia. Civil War Virginians is the eighth and last of the author’s series, Civil War Personalities: 50 at a Time. This volume profiles 50 Virginians who played critical roles in various fields during the war. Like the other books in the Civil War Personalities series, it offers readers unique insight into this pivotal American event and the era in which it occurred through the eyes of a wide range of participants. Four other volumes in the series were also released this year. They are: Civil War Women—Underestimated and Indispensable: 50 Women Who Made a Difference in the “American Iliad”; Civil War Unsung Heroes and Other K ey Actors “Behind the Scenes”: 50 Forgotten, but Influential, Civil War Men and Women; Civil War Ohioans: 50 Buckeyes Who Made a Difference in the “American Iliad” ; and, The Civil Wa r in Statuary Hall: Who Should Be Memorialized in the U.S. Capitol? Gene Schmiel retired from the Foreign Service in 2002 after a 24-year career that included tours as chargé d’affaires in Djibouti, Bissau and Reykjavík, among many other assignments. Before joining the Service, he was an assistant professor of history at St. Francis University in Pennsylvania, and has taught at Marymount, Shenandoah and Penn State universities. Currently, he lectures at Civil War Round Tables and is also a speaker on cruises for American Cruise Lines on the Mississippi River and on the Southeast Coast. Schmiel has specialized in the Civil War since the publication of his award-winning book, Citizen-General: Jacob Dolson Cox and the Civil War Era (2014). See his website for details: https://civilwarhistory-geneschmiel.com. Searching for Irvin McDowell: Forgotten Civil War General Frank P. Simione Jr. and Gene Schmiel, independently published, 2021, $19.99/paperback, 295 pages. Gene Schmiel and co-author Frank Simione Jr. deem U.S. General Irvin McDowell a major actor in the Civil War for a short but critical period in the war’s early days, and say his life story deserves to be told and remem- bered. That task is severely hampered by the fact that McDowell did not write a memoir, and left few papers behind other than his official reports, a few letters and orders to and from others. Nonetheless, Schmiel and his collaborator do a masterful job of giving the general his due via this book, the first biography devoted to him. A dutiful but limited officer, McDowell was chosen to lead the largest army in American history at the Battle of First Bull Run. The book covers his entire life, but focuses mainly on his military service in northern Virginia, including his lament on “what might have been.” The Road Less Traveled: The Secret Battle to End the Great War, 1916-1917 Philip Zelikow, PublicAffairs, 2021, $30/hardcover, e-book available, 352 pages. “Clear judgments and waffle-free language, as well as the novelty and importance of the subject, are what make this book such a fascinating read,” says former FSO Harry Kopp in his review of The Road Less Traveled in this issue (see review, p. 101). “Lessons for the statesman leap from these pages.” In 1916, two years into the most terrible conflict the world had ever known, there was a chance to end it, saving millions of lives and changing the course of history. The German chancellor secretly sought President Woodrow Wilson’s mediation to end the war, just as British ministers and France’s president also concluded that the time was right. “Peace is on the floor waiting to be picked up!” the German ambassador to the United States said. That chance did not, however, materialize. In The Road Less Traveled , Philip Zelikow explores this seldom-remembered moment, what he terms “the most