The Foreign Service Journal, November 2022

36 NOVEMBER 2022 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL that life-changing sojourn. The result was ultimately this book. The author’s reflections on that pivotal year are enriched by his subsequent experiences in India as USAID deputy program officer in New Delhi from 1981 to 1984 and, in 2011, on a temporary assignment as acting director for the USAID mission in Delhi to prepare for then–Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s strategic dialogue with India. If you’ve been posted to India, you’ll no doubt recognize the country in his occasionally heartbreaking descriptions and compelling prose. Frank Young retired in 2005 after a 33-year Foreign Service career. He served in India, the Philippines, Bangladesh, and Ghana. He lives in Sarasota, Florida, with his wife, Patricia Oxley Young. For insight into how he wrote this book, see Young’s article, “Memoir Writing: The Art of Telling Your Story, ” on page 56. Lessons from the Edge: A Memoir Marie Yovanovitch, Mariner Books, 2022, $30/hardcover, e-book available, 416 pages. Marie “Masha” Yovanovitch’s New York Times bestseller is heralded as “moving and illuminating” (Ambassador Eric Rubin, April 2022 FSJ ) and, in the late Secretary Madeleine Albright’s words, “essential reading for current policy- makers, aspiring public servants, and anyone who cares about America’s role in the world.” A powerful narrative of personal and professional resilience, Lessons from the Edge encompasses Ambassador (ret.) Yovanovitch’s experiences as a contemplative young scholar, a determined diplomat in a male-dominated field, and an iconic public figure in former President Donald Trump’s impeachment inquiry. Her commitment to integrity, accountability, and the enduring value of democracy throughout these events and as she was called to testify against Trump after her duplicitous removal from Ukraine earned her admiration at home and worldwide. Marie Yovanovitch’s 33-year diplomatic career included ambassadorships in Ukraine, Armenia, and Kyrgyzstan. In 2020 she retired from the State Department and now is a nonresident fellow at Georgetown University and a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. The Memoirs of Ambassador J. Graham Parsons: A Foreign Service Life Edited by Robert D. Eldridge, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2022, £78.99/hardcover, print only, 411 pages. Highly respected yet private and reserved, J. (Jeff) Graham Parsons (1907-1991) kept detailed personal records of his Foreign Service career spanning a tumultuous 40 years punctuated by World War II. During assignments that included Japan, China, Cuba, Wash- ington, D.C., India, Japan, Laos, and Sweden (the latter two as ambassador), he interacted with some of the most famous figures of the 20th century and was known for his “old school” commitment to policy and diplomatic principles. In this work, historian Robert Eldridge has organized what Parsons called “a hodgepodge of about fifty ‘vignettes’ of varied character” into an absorbing chronicle of one diplomat’s life, including a very helpful preface and introduction. Parsons discusses his professional development and his interactions with prominent political leaders, but also notes: “My little sketches serve to remind that a life in diplomacy is not just a succession of great historical events but is full of unmemorable minutia seldom mentioned in memoirs but often quite entertaining.” Robert D. Eldridge, a historian of Japanese political and diplomatic history, has lived and worked in Japan for almost 30 years. He is the author of The U.S. Marine Corps and Disaster Response in the Indo-Pacific Region (2020) and The History of U.S.-Japan Relations (2017). Our Foreign Service Adventure would be a good Movie Rae Bourquein, independently published, 2021, $5/paperback, e-book available, 136 pages. This self-published memoir details a USAID family’s travels from the 1960s through the 1980s. The author opens by stating that such a life “is not possible anymore, since the world has changed so much.” Indeed, current Foreign Service members may gape at the description of traveling first class on a cruise ship to their first posting, in Tokyo, where the author’s husband was assigned to the General Accounting Office.