The Foreign Service Journal, November 2021

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | NOVEMBER 2021 55 Henry Kissinger and American Power: A Political Biography Thomas A. Schwartz, Hill and Wang, 2020, $35/hardcover, e-book available, 560 pages. Though he has been out of govern- ment for more than 40 years, former National Security Adviser and Secre- tary of State Henry Kissinger remains the most prominent diplomat of the postwar era for most Americans. To fully understand Kissinger and his legacy, Thomas A. Schwartz maintains, one must see him as a political actor, a politician and a man who understood that American foreign policy is funda- mentally shaped and determined by the struggles and battles of American domestic politics. Thomas A. Schwartz is Distinguished Professor of History at Vanderbilt University, where he specializes in the foreign relations of the United States. He has served on the U.S. State Department’s Historical Advisory Committee and as president of the Society of Historians of American Foreign Relations. Henry Kissinger and American Power is his third book. They Call It Diplomacy: Forty Years of Representing Britain Abroad Peter Westmacott, Apollo, 2021, $39.95/hardcover, e-book available, 368 pages. If Peter Westmacott had done nothing else in this memoir but regale readers with tales of a four-decade diplo- matic career, it would be fascinating enough. But on top of that, They Call It Diplomacy explains what diplomats actually do; mounts a vigorous defense of the continuing relevance of the diplomat in an age of instant communication, social media and special envoys; and details what Westmacott sees as some of the suc- cesses of recent British diplomacy. Peter Westmacott was a British diplomat for more than 40 years. He began his career in pre-revolutionary Iran and rose to become ambassador to Turkey, France and finally the United States, where he represented the United Kingdom during the second term of President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden between 2012 and 2016. The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War Craig Whitlock, Simon & Schuster, 2021, $30/hardcover, e-book available, 368 pages. Arriving exactly 50 years after the original “Pentagon Papers” were pub- lished, this volume is our generation’s version of that bombshell. Yet, surely, even journalist Craig Whitlock could not have anticipated just how timely his survey of the past two decades of American involvement in Afghanistan would turn out to be. Reviewing the book in the October Foreign Service Journal , retired FSO Edmund McWilliams calls it “a timely, dispassionate contribution to our understanding of America's nearly 20-year engagement in Afghanistan, a failed adventure that cost thousands of American and NATO partner lives. … It is an essential resource.” Craig Whitlock, an investigative reporter for The Washington Post , has covered the global war on terrorism since 2001. In 2019, his coverage of the war in Afghanistan won the George Polk Award for Military Reporting, among many other honors. The Middle Way: How Three Presidents Shaped America’s Role in the World Derek Chollet, Oxford University Press, 2021, $29.95/hardcover, e-book available, 256 pages. Presidents Dwight Eisenhower, George H.W. Bush and Barack Obama—two Republicans and a Democrat—may not seem to have a lot in common. But The Middle Way makes a compelling case that by taking a centrist approach to international affairs, all three leaders rose above partisanship and surmounted historical amnesia to make lasting diplomatic gains. Former Deputy Secretary of State William J. Burns calls this book “an important, timely, elegant and provocative work of diplomatic history from one of the finest thinkers and practitioners of his generation. If Americans are ever to find their way again in the world, this book is an essential starting point.” Derek Chollet served the Obama administration in senior positions at the White House, State Department and Pentagon. He was also executive vice president of the German Marshall