The Foreign Service Journal, November 2021

52 NOVEMBER 2021 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL epilogue. “But I would hope that there may be extracts here that can power and resonate your own search for meaning, purpose and discovery.” Allan J. “Alonzo” Wind is a retired Senior FSO. With USAID from 1990 to 1992 and from 1999 to 2019, he served in Peru, Nicaragua, Angola, Nigeria, Iraq, Afghanistan and South Africa. He and his wife reside in Fairfax County, Virginia, while their adult daughter is in Africa on her own adventures. Africa Memoir: 50 Years, 54 Countries, One American Life (Volume 2: Libya–Senegal) Mark G. Wentling, Open Books, 2020, $21.95/paperback, e-book available, 248 pages. Fun fact: Retired USAID Senior Foreign Service Officer Mark G. Wentling has worked in or visited all 54 African countries over the course of a half-century. The first vol- ume of his Africa Memoir (published last year), commemorat- ing those travels, covered precisely half of those nations, from Algeria through Liberia. Continuing his alphabetical survey of the continent, Volume II covers another 14 countries: Libya to Senegal. As the author notes in the opening chapter, he never intended to visit every nation on the continent. But in 1998 or so, after 28 years in Africa, “I was asked how many African countries I had visited. It was at that moment that I realized that there were only 10 countries left in Africa that I had not visited.” From then on, Wentling began trying to land jobs in those spots, and began taking vacations in island African nations to fill out his dance card. His 54th and final destination was the one he least wanted to set foot in: “I never wanted to go to Libya. It was not a country that interested me.” But as with the other 13 countries he tells us about in this volume, Wentling finds fascinating details to share. A Peace Corps volunteer in Togo (1970-1973) and, later, director in Gabon and Niger, Mark Wentling joined the USAID Foreign Service in 1977 and served in Niger, Guinea, Togo, Benin, Angola, Somalia and Tanzania. After retiring in 1996, he worked under contract as USAID’s senior adviser for the Great Lakes Region of Central Africa and as a consultant in Malawi, Senegal, South Africa and Zambia. Africa Memoir: 50 Years, 54 Countries, One American Life (Volume 3: Seychelles– Zimbabwe) Mark G. Wentling, Open Books, 2020, $21.95/paperback, e-book available, 315 pages. Retired FSO Mark G. Wentling concludes his three-volume memoir by recounting his time in 13 of the 54 African countries he has visited: Seychelles to Zimbabwe. Doing justice to each of these societies is easier in some cases than others; thanks to the vagaries of the alphabet, Volume III includes Somalia and Zimbabwe. But it also includes the very first African country the author set foot in, Togo—about which he cites a tourist poster he saw when he arrived as a Peace Corps volunteer in 1970: “If you don’t know Togo, you don’t know Africa.” Based on this memoir, there is no doubt that Mark Wentling knows Africa. Gifted Greek: The Enigma of Andreas Papandreou Monteagle Stearns, Potomac Books, 2021, $29.95/hardcover, 176 pages. (An ADST-DACOR Diplomats and Diplomacy Book) In her introduction to this posthu- mously published book by her late husband, which she completed at his request, Antonia Stearns describes it as a combination of memoir and character study. The work centers on Greece’s first socialist prime minister, Andreas Papandreou, whom the couple first met in 1959, and explores his “transformation from affable American economist to fiery, anti-American Greek politician Monty witnessed at close hand during three assignments to Athens, the last as U.S. ambas- sador.” As the author ruefully remarks in the beginning pages, “Few Greeks in recent memory have aroused more exasperation in our foreign policy establishment than Andreas Papandreou.” Gifted Greek is the 71st volume in the ADST-DACOR Diplomats and Diplomacy book series. Monteagle Stearns was an information specialist at the State Department early in his career, and then served with the U.S. Information Agency from 1953 to 1955 before joining the State