22 NOVEMBER 2023 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL In what may be a first for the State Department, his wife convinces the embassy to allow Buford and the kids to travel to post ahead of her. Much hilarity ensues as he tries to enroll kids in school, navigate the grocery store, and complete all the other tasks of an FS spouse with limited French. Gregory Buford is also the author of Making Ghosts Dance (2017), which was both a Montaigne Medal and Eric Hoffer Award finalist, and Kept: An American Househusband in India (2018). He currently lives in Turkmenistan, where he’s working on a memoir of his time in Cambodia and a novel set in Austin, Texas. A Texas native, Buford has lived in the Dominican Republic, Japan, India, France, Cambodia, and Switzerland. Africa, You Have a Friend in Washington: An American Diplomat’s Adventures in Sub-Saharan Africa Herman J. Cohen, New Academia Publishing/VELLUM, 2023, $24.00/ paperback, print only, 142 pages. After being sworn into the Foreign Service in July 1955, Herman Cohen immediately failed his French language exam. Twice. He was then sent to Paris for his first assignment and given one final opportunity to pass the language exam or face separation from the Service. He passed and went on to spend 38 years in the Foreign Service. In his memoir, a volume in the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training’s Memoirs and Occasional Papers series, Cohen offers a fascinating insider’s perspective on the political and cultural changes taking place across the African continent in the 1960s. He recalls joining the newly organized Bureau of African Affairs just as 35 British and French colonies were becoming independent countries. Cohen helped create a new embassy in Kampala before moving on to the racially segregated city of Salisbury in Southern Rhodesia, where, as the regional labor officer, he worked with separate Black and white labor unions. As a senior officer, Cohen had numerous interactions with department leadership. He writes about meeting with Secretaries of State James Baker and George Shultz, along with various African leaders. He also writes about his 1984 assignment as principal deputy assistant secretary for personnel, when he negotiated with AFSA leadership to resolve employee grievances and had to make difficult decisions regarding curtailments and other matters. During his time in the Foreign Service, Herman Cohen served in France, Uganda, Southern Rhodesia, Zambia, Zaire, and Washington, D.C., before becoming U.S. ambassador to Senegal and The Gambia. Among other high-level positions related to Africa, he served as assistant secretary of State for African affairs from 1989 to 1993. He retired in 1994 with the rank of Career Ambassador and is now president and CEO of Cohen and Woods International. He received the 2019 AFSA Award for Lifetime Contributions to American Diplomacy and is also the author of The Mind of the African Strongman: Conversations with Dictators, Statesmen, and Father Figures (2015) and US Policy Toward Africa: Eight Decades of Realpolitik (2020). Learning Diplomacy: An Oral History Luigi R. Einaudi, independently published, 2023, $26.99/paperback, e-book available, 686 pages. The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training (ADST) has the largest collection of U.S. diplomatic oral history, covering the stories of known and not-so-known diplomats alike. ADST interviewed retired FSO Luigi Einaudi beginning in 2013; Learning Diplomacy: An Oral History is the compilation of those interviews. The story begins with Einaudi’s birth in 1936 and covers his education, military experience, and professional experience, including as a Foreign Service officer. The story gives an insider’s view of the work of the policy planning staff in the 1970s under then–Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and in the 1990s during Warren Christopher’s tenure as Secretary. It covers events that occurred during Einaudi’s tenure with the State Department, including the Peru-Ecuador War, border conflicts in Central America, the 1973 Chilean coup, and more. He also discusses the future of the department, saying it needs the resources to enable personnel floats that allow time for training and education. Luigi Einaudi joined the Foreign Service as a reserve officer in 1974, after a decade at the RAND Corporation. His 23-year career culminated in service as the U.S. special envoy to the peace talks between Ecuador and Peru in 1998. He served twice on the Secretary of State’s policy planning staff and was director of policy planning for inter-American affairs (1977-1989) and ambassador to the Organization of American States (1989-1993). In 2000 Einaudi was elected assistant secretary general of the
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy ODIyMDU=