Realities of Foreign Service Life
Realities of Foreign Service Life

Author: Associates of the American Foreign Service Worldwide

Publisher: iUniverse

Published: 2002-10-08

Total Pages: 290

ISBN-13: 9781475909449

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Mention a diplomatic career and most people imagine high-level meetings, formal dress and cocktail parties. Few stop to think that behind the occasional glitter of official functions are thousands of families facing all the routines and crises of life-births, deaths, childrearing, divorce-far from home, relatives, and friends, in an unfamiliar and sometimes unfriendly country and culture. This book provides reflections and perspectives on the realities of Foreign Service life as experienced by members of the Foreign Service community around the world. The writers share their unvarnished views on a wide variety of topics they care about: maintaining long-distance relationships, raising teens abroad, dealing with depression, coping with evacuations, readjusting to life in the United States, and many others. These are stories from the diplomatic trenches-true experiences from those who have lived the lifestyle and want to share their hard-learned lessons with others. ?If you are new to the Foreign Service, this book will offer insights and practical information useful in your overseas tours and when you return home. Even if you are a seasoned veteran of the Foreign Service, the reports and reflections of others may encourage you to compare and evaluate your own experiences. ? If you (or your partner) are contemplating joining the Foreign Service, this book can serve as a reality check, giving you honest, personal perspectives on both the positive and negative aspects of Foreign Service life. ? If you are a student wondering what the Foreign Service is all about, this book will broaden your knowledge and provide you with an insider's view not found in any textbook.

Realities of Foreign Service Life
Realities of Foreign Service Life

Author: Patricia Linderman

Publisher: iUniverse

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 292

ISBN-13: 0595250777

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Mention a diplomatic career and most people imagine high-level meetings, formal dress and cocktail parties. Few stop to think that behind the occasional glitter of official functions are thousands of families facing all the routines and crises of life-births, deaths, childrearing, divorce-far from home, relatives, and friends, in an unfamiliar and sometimes unfriendly country and culture. This book provides reflections and perspectives on the realities of Foreign Service life as experienced by members of the Foreign Service community around the world. The writers share their unvarnished views on a wide variety of topics they care about: maintaining long-distance relationships, raising teens abroad, dealing with depression, coping with evacuations, readjusting to life in the United States, and many others. These are stories from the diplomatic trenches-true experiences from those who have lived the lifestyle and want to share their hard-learned lessons with others. If you are new to the Foreign Service, this book will offer insights and practical information useful in your overseas tours and when you return home. Even if you are a seasoned veteran of the Foreign Service, the reports and reflections of others may encourage you to compare and evaluate your own experiences. If you (or your partner) are contemplating joining the Foreign Service, this book can serve as a reality check, giving you honest, personal perspectives on both the positive and negative aspects of Foreign Service life. If you are a student wondering what the Foreign Service is all about, this book will broaden your knowledge and provide you with an insider's view not found in any textbook.

Realities of Foreign Service Life, Volume 2
Realities of Foreign Service Life, Volume 2

Author: Patricia Linderman

Publisher:

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780595453146

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In this second volume of AAFSW's Realities of Foreign Life, 29 members of the U.S. diplomatic community - including employees, spouses and one articulate teen - share their knowledge, research and personal perspectives, broadening and extending the first book's candid insights into the Foreign Service lifestyle. Focusing on the "realities" faced by diplomats and their families outside the embassy or consulate walls, the authors explore topics such as schooling and housing abroad, intercultural marriage, medical evacuations, employment for accompanying partners, and the growing number of unaccompanied assignments. - If you are already a member of the Foreign Service community (and especially if you have recently joined), this book will provide useful and practical information for the fascinating but often challenging journey ahead. - If you (or your partner) are thinking about entering the Foreign Service, this book joins the first volume in serving as a "reality check," offering a clear view of both the positive and negative aspects of Foreign Service life, for partners and children as well as employees. - If you are a student contemplating a career in diplomacy, a friend or relative of a Foreign Service member - or if you are simply curious about the lives of U.S. diplomats and their families overseas - this book will give you an insider's perspective found nowhere else.

What Diplomats Do
What Diplomats Do

Author: Brian Barder

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2014-07-22

Total Pages: 246

ISBN-13: 1442226366

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What do diplomats actually do? That is what this text seeks to answer by describing the various stages of a typical diplomat’s career. The book follows a fictional diplomat from his application to join the national diplomatic service through different postings at home and overseas, culminating with his appointment as ambassador and retirement. Each chapter contains case studies, based on the author’s thirty year experience as a diplomat, Ambassador, and High Commissioner. These illustrate such key issues as the role of the diplomat during emergency crises or working as part of a national delegation to a permanent conference as the United Nations. Rigorously academic in its coverage yet extremely lively and engaging, this unique work will serve as a primer to any students and junior diplomats wishing to grasp what the practice of diplomacy is actually like.

Inside a U.S. Embassy
Inside a U.S. Embassy

Author: Shawn Dorman

Publisher: Potomac Books

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 156

ISBN-13:

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Ever wonder exactly what the Foreign Service is and what goes on inside a U.S. Embassy? A U.S. embassy is home to a dynamic team of professionals committed to public service and the value of diplomacy. Inside a U.S. Embassy gives an up-close and person look into the lives of the diplomats and specialists who make up the U.S. Foreign Service. Gain a sense of the key role played by each member of an embassy team from Paris to Kabul, from Bogota to Beijing, and places in between. Travel into the rainforests of Thailand with an environmental affairs officer, face rampaging militias with a political officer in East Timor, and join an ambassador on a midnight trip into a Macedonian refugee camp to quell a riot. A Foreign Service career offers the experience of living in diverse cultures and the challenge of making a difference in the world. Come along inside a U.S. embassy and learn how the Foreign Service works for America.

Inside a U.S. Embassy
Inside a U.S. Embassy

Author: Shawn Dorman

Publisher: Potomac Books, Inc.

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 284

ISBN-13: 1612344674

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Inside a U.S. Embassy is widely recognized as the essential guide to the Foreign Service. This all-new third edition takes readers to more than fifty U.S. missions around the world, introducing Foreign Service professionals and providing detailed descriptions of their jobs and firsthand accounts of diplomacy in action. In addition to profiles of diplomats and specialists around the world-from the ambassador to the consular officer, the public diplomacy officer to the security specialist-is a selection from more than twenty countries of day-in-the-life accounts, each describing an actual day on.

American Diplomats
American Diplomats

Author: William D. Morgan

Publisher: iUniverse

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 322

ISBN-13: 0595329748

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What do the men and women of America's diplomatic corps do? William D. Morgan and Charles Stuart Kennedy, themselves career diplomats, culled over 1400 oral interviews with their Foreign Service peers to present forty excerpts covering events from the 1920s to the 1990s. Insiders recount what happens when a consul spies on Nazi Germany, Mao Tse-Tung drops by for a chat, the Cold War begins with the Berlin blockade, the Marshall Plan rescues Europe, Sukarno moves Indonesia into the communist camp, Khrushchev calls President Kennedy an SOB, and our ambassador is murdered in Kabul. "You are there" accounts deepen readers' understanding, as diplomatic and consular officers talk about the beginnings of Kremlinology, predicting a coup in Ecuador, Hemingway and the embassy in Havana, the secret formulation of the NATO treaty, Jerusalem after the British and the US recognition of Israel, fighting in the Congo over Katangan secession, dealing with an alcoholic foreign president, human rights work in Paraguay, the U.S. Embassy takeover in Tehran, the bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, helping families of the Pan Am 103 victims, Greece and Turkey at odds over a tiny island, embassy roles in Riyadh and Tel Aviv during Desert Storm, and many more.

Seriously Not All Right
Seriously Not All Right

Author: Ron Capps

Publisher: Schaffner Press, Inc.

Published: 2014-05-01

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 1936182580

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For more than a decade, Ron Capps, serving as both a senior military intelligence officer and as a Foreign Service officer for the U.S. Department of State, was witness to war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and genocide. From government atrocities in Kosovo, to the brutal cruelties perpetrated in several conflicts in central Africa, the wars in both Aghanistan and Iraq, and culminating in genocide in Darfur, Ron acted as an intelligence collector and reporter but was diplomatically restrained from taking preventative action in these conflicts. The cumulative effect of these experiences, combined with the helplessness of his role as an observer, propelled him into a deep depression and a long bout with PTSD, which nearly caused him to take his own life. Seriously Not All Right is a memoir that provides a unique perspective of a professional military officer and diplomat who suffered (and continues to suffer) from PTSD. His story, and that of his recovery and his newfound role as founder and teacher of the Veterans Writing Project, is an inspiration and a sobering reminder of the cost of all wars, particularly those that appeared in the media and to the general public as merely sidelines in the unfolding drama of world events.

Career Diplomacy
Career Diplomacy

Author: Harry Kopp

Publisher: Georgetown University Press

Published: 2017-09-01

Total Pages: 300

ISBN-13: 162616469X

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Ronald Neumann, former US ambassador and president of the American Academy of Diplomacy, called the second edition of Career Diplomacy a "must-read for those seeking understanding of today's foreign service." In this third edition Kopp and Naland, both of whom had distinguished careers in the field, provide an authoritative and candid account of the foreign service, exploring the five career tracks--consular, political, economic, management, and public diplomacy--through their own experience and through interviews with over one hundred current and former foreign service officials. The book includes significant revisions and updates from the previous edition, such as: Obama administration's use of the foreign service; a thorough discussion of the relationship of the foreign service and the Department of State to other agencies, and to the combatant commands; an expanded analysis of hiring procedures; commentary on challenging management issues in the Department of State, including the proliferation of political appointments, the rapid growth in the number of high-level positions, and the difficulties of running an agency with employees in two personnel systems (civil service and foreign service); and a fresh examination of the changing nature and demographics of the foreign service. Includes a glossary, bibliography, and list of websites and blogs on the subject.