The Foreign Service Journal, November 2022

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | NOVEMBER 2022 47 In The Development Diplomat , Sumar focuses on her time fighting poverty and promoting economic opportunity in the developing world. She recounts deeply personal stories of com- ing face-to-face with stark deprivation while emphasizing cross- disciplinary approaches for managing government development efforts. The Development Diplomat offers critical lessons for reforming the challenging and convoluted methods of interna- tional development based on her multifaceted experience in the field and in Washington. Fatema Z. Sumar is the vice president of compact operations at the Millennium Challenge Corporation. She previously served as a deputy assistant secretary of State for South and Central Asia and as a senior professional staff member for the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Ms. Sumar sits on advisory boards for Princeton, Cornell, and Indiana universities. Atomic Steppe: How Kazakhstan Gave Up the Bomb Togzhan Kassenova, Stanford University Press, 2022, $30/paperback, e-book available, 384 pages. For more than 40 years, the Soviet Union used Kazakhstan for nuclear testing; with the breakup of the USSR in 1991, Kazakhstan became overnight a country with the fourth-largest nuclear arsenal in the world. Author Togzhan Kassenova documents how the country gave up this nuclear inheritance through diplomacy. The author’s “knowledge of the international nuclear world allows her to place this story … within the context of the global nonprolifera- tion regime and the geopolitical pull and tug of the Cold War and its aftermath,” writes Ambassador (ret.) Laura Kennedy in her April 2022 FSJ review of this book. Dr. Togzhan Kassenova is a Washington, D.C.–based senior fellow with the Project on International Security, Commerce, and Economic Statecraft (PISCES) at the Center for Policy Research, State University of New York at Albany, and a nonresident fellow in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. From 2011 to 2015, she served on the U.N. secretary-general’s Advisory Board on Disarmament Matters. Mexico, A Challenging Assignment: U.S. Ambassadors Share Their Experiences Dolia Estévez, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, 2022, available (free) online: www.wilsoncenter.org , 263 pages. This is a valuable sourcebook on diplo- macy and the history of U.S.-Mexico relations. At its core are 12 interviews— one with each of the U.S. ambassadors to Mexico from 1977 to 2021, both career and political, through three Democratic and four Republican administrations. A historical overview of the U.S.-Mexico relationship and contex- tual details relating to the post-1977 period helpfully frame the interviews. As the author explains in her introduction, the book is neither an assessment of the ambassadors’ performances nor an analysis of U.S. policy toward Mexico: “It is rather an original work of journalism that tells the story of 45 years of U.S.-Mexico relations from the unique perspective of these key actors.” We hear their voices and see Mexico through their eyes. Dolia Estévez is a senior independent journalist and analyst based in Washington, D.C. She has been reporting on U.S.- Mexico relations since the late 1980s for both Mexican and U.S. print and radio outlets. See the Desert and Die: A David MarkhamMystery Ann Saxton Reh, Prospect Street Press, 2022, $12.99/paperback, e-book available, 313 pages. The titled hero in Ann Saxton Reh’s mystery series is a Foreign Service officer. The first volume, See the Desert and Die , follows ethnographer Layne Darius into the Arabian Desert in 1980 to answer why and how her mother disappeared there years ago. Layne sets off from Riyadh with her stepbrother, also an ethnographer. Not far into the desert, the two run into mechanical and logistical problems. Fortunately, they cross paths with FSO David Markhamwho builds a powerful connection with Layne. Ann Saxton Reh has lived in Bermuda, England, Libya, India, Saudi Arabia, and Greece, owing to a parent and spouse in military service. Her fascination with other cultures and ancient civilizations informed her teaching and now writing career,