THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | NOVEMBER 2024 31 HISTORY & BIOGRAPHY When Harry Met Pablo: Truman, Picasso, and the Cold War Politics of Modern Art Matthew Algeo, Chicago Review Press, 2023, $28.99/hardcover, e-book available, 256 pages. In the summer of 1958, former U.S. President Harry Truman and Pablo Picasso spent a day together sightseeing in the south of France, a meeting arranged by the founding director of the Museum of Modern Art, Alfred Barr. e politician and the painter were an odd couple: Picasso was a communist, and the only thing Truman hated more than communists was modern art. But they hit it o , striking up an unusual friendship that also served as a rebuke to critics of modern art in the United States. is book will appeal to readers interested in a broad range of subjects from the Cold War, American politics, and McCarthyism to art history and travel writing. Matthew Algeo is married to FSO Allyson Algeo, who is currently the deputy chief of mission in Gaborone. e couple’s previous postings include Bamako, Rome, Ulaanbaatar, Maputo, and Sarajevo. The Barber Family: From Slavery, Through Segregation and the Civil Rights Movement Donald M. Barber and David G. Brown, independently published, 2024, $20.00/paperback, print only, 102 pages. is book follows four generations of the Black American Barber family, describing challenges they faced living in the rural and racist post–Civil War society of St. Mary’s County in Southern Maryland. e book was written by retired FSO David G. Brown and Donald M. Barber, a retired social service worker and one of the book’s subjects. Although emancipated in 1864, the Barbers lived in a segregated society dominated by white men and women who wished to preserve their Southern way of living. Successive generations of the Barber family overcame this as they sought the education and opportunities that would allow them to build self-reliant, prosperous, and ful lling lives with dignity. e book is available for purchase only from Historic Sotterley, Inc., through museumstore@Sotterley.org. David Brown spent 32 years in the Foreign Service, including assignments in Ho Chi Minh City, Tokyo, Beijing, Taipei, and as deputy consul general in Hong Kong. His last assignment before retiring in 1996 was as director of Korean a airs in Washington, D.C. Lessons from History: The Leadership Challenge of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: Why It Matters Today Emilio Iodice, independently published, 2024, $14.00/paperback, e-book available, 134 pages. Emilio Iodice has written a new book on leadership, this time exploring how Martin Luther King Jr. led his battle for equality, lifting the burden of segregation from the shoulders of Black Americans. Iodice calls Dr. King “one of the most extraordinary leaders in American history,” whose emotional intelligence and ability to lead with courage, Iodice explains, set the stage for a moral change in the character of Americans. Emilio Iodice served in Brazil, Mexico, Spain, and Italy before retiring from the Foreign Service in 1998. He subsequently served as vice president of Lucent Technologies and director and professor of leadership of the John Felice Rome Center of Loyola University until 2016. His book e Extraordinary Leadership of Eleanor Roosevelt: Why It Matters Today was featured in the November 2023 FSJ. Our First Glimpse of Japan: Prominent American Visitors to Japan in the 1870s Samuel Kidder, ed., Piscataqua Press, 2024, $25.00/paperback, print only, 373 pages. Our First Glimpse of Japan is a collection of contemporary published and personal accounts of travel in Japan during the 1870s by four prominent Americans: William H. Seward (Abraham Lincoln’s Secretary of State), Charles A. Longfellow
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