42 NOVEMBER 2024 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL e Times Literary Supplement calls American Imperialist “compelling. … is page-turner should encourage more public interest in other U.S. imperialists, including Henry Sanford, who was instrumental in founding the [Congo] Free State. One also hopes that it will stimulate more work on the African collective memory of such imperialists, to assess the lasting consequences of their nefarious actions.” Arwen P. Mohun, a history professor at the University of Delaware, teaches and writes about capitalism, technology, and gender in American history. A Life in the American Century Joseph S. Nye Jr., Polity, 2024, $29.95/paperback, e-book available, 254 pages. Long renowned for his expertise on the theory and praxis of statecraft and foreign policy, Joseph Nye has published dozens of well-received books and countless articles over the years. His latest volume, A Life in the American Century (employing a catchphrase associated with Henry Luce, the publisher of Time and Life magazines), is a memoir tracing his rise to the halls of power and in uence. Reviewing the book in the October 2024 FSJ, Joseph Novak lauds Nye’s “ability to deftly interweave the details of his personal journey around brief accounts of the epoch in which he lived.” Joseph Nye Jr. is University Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus and former dean of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. He also served as assistant secretary of Defense for international security a airs, chair of the National Intelligence Council, and a deputy under secretary of State, and won distinguished service awards from all three agencies. Military Guide to the U.S. Embassy Center for Army Lessons Learned, 2023, free PDF, 53 pages. e poet Robert Burns once wrote: “Oh, would some Power give us to see ourselves as others see us!” Answering that plea by diplomats, the Center for Army Lessons Learned has issued this Military Guide to the U.S. Embassy “to improve Department of Defense interactions with Foreign Service professionals.” Toward that end, it describes the organization, mission, and culture of the U.S. Department of State and the U.S. Agency for International Development as well as the interagency sta at U.S. embassies. e book’s ve chapters also discuss the agencies’ role in crafting the U.S. National Security Strategy, concluding with a list of ways DoD personnel can successfully integrate into, and communicate with, U.S. embassy country teams. e Center for Army Lessons Learned leads the U.S. Army’s Lessons Learned Program, delivering timely and relevant information to resolve gaps, enhance readiness, and inform modernization. e guide can be downloaded at https://bit.ly/ Military-Guide-to-Embassies. Beyond the Water’s Edge: How Partisanship Corrupts U.S. Foreign Policy Paul R. Pillar, Columbia University Press, 2023, $35.00/hardcover, e-book available, 328 pages. Many FSJ readers probably know the 19th-century aphorism that “even our party divisions, acrimonious as they are, cease at the water’s edge.” But as Paul Pillar documents in Beyond the Water’s Edge, it has often been a mere aspiration, if that. And that, Pillar warns, “is a perversion of the constructive role of political parties in articulating competing interests and grand strategies.” Reviewing the book in the June 2024 FSJ, retired FSO Joseph L. Novak commends Pillar for sending up “a are on the threat posed to U.S. national security by extreme political polarization.” Paul R. Pillar is a nonresident senior fellow of the Center for Security Studies at Georgetown University and a nonresident fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. He served in several senior positions in the U.S. intelligence community and is a retired o cer in the U.S. Army Reserve. Twenty Years: Hope, War, and the Betrayal of an Afghan Generation Sune Engel Rasmussen, Farrar, Straus & Giroux (FSG), 2024, $30.00/hardcover, e-book available, 352 pages. Pushing back against our collective amnesia about the chaotic 2021 American withdrawal from Afghanistan, journalist Sune Engel Rasmussen’s
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