Can John D. Negroponte be described as “The Last American Diplomat?” In a career spanning 50 years of unprecedented American global power, he was the last of a dying breed of patrician diplomats – devoted to public service, a self-effacing, and ultimate insider, whose prime duty was to advise, guide, and warn. Negroponte served as US ambassador to Honduras, Mexico, the Philippines and Iraq; he was US Permanent Representative to the UN, Director of National Intelligence and Deputy Secretary of State to George W. Bush. His was a high-flying and seemingly conventional career but one full of surprises.
He opposed Kissinger in Vietnam, argued against direct military action against Marxists in Central America and warned that the Iraq War could be another “Vietnam.” George W. Liebmann’s incisive account of Negroponte’s life and career is based on personal and shared experience, as well as thorough research and interviews with Negroponte and other leading actors. It will provide fascinating reading for students and researchers interested in the inside-story of American diplomacy, revealing personal and policy struggles, and the underlying fissures present even in the world’s last remaining superpower.
About George W. Liebmann
George W. Liebmann is a lawyer and historian specializing in American and international diplomatic history. His publications include Diplomacy Between the Wars: Five Diplomats and the Shaping of the Modern World (I.B.Tauris).
“The Last American Diplomat: John D. Negroponte and the Changing Face of American Diplomacy” by George W. Liebmann
The Washington Post Book Review – August 10, 2012 (Excerpt)
As the author notes, his subject, John D. Negroponte, was a Democrat early in his career, a Republican at the end of it, but “no partisan.” As ambassador to countries as disparate as the Philippines and Iraq, as U.S. permanent representative to the United Nations, as director of national intelligence under President George W. Bush, the long-serving Negroponte achieved a curriculum vitae that few American diplomats can match.
His last title was deputy secretary of state, in which capacity he found himself frequently at odds with the administration for which he worked — that of the second President Bush. “It is hard, without caricature,” lawyer and historian George W. Liebmann writes, “to describe the difficulties under which Negroponte labored for the last eight years of his tenure, particularly for the first six of them.” [Read the full article...]
Advertisement
DOODLEBUGS & SPITFIRES
Memories and Short Stories by Peter Carroll
“Doodlebugs & Spitfires” is a delightful collection of memories and short stories written by Peter Carroll, the author of “Queen of Misfortune,” in his trademark poetic and profoundly thoughtful style.
Most of his stories, previously published in limited form in local English newspapers and magazines, like “Brave New World”, “The Forties Street Tradesmen”, “Doodlebugs”, or “The Christmas of 43” evolve around his childhood in the Northern part of London during and after World War II. He describes the horrors that came with the V1 flying bombs, nicknamed the “Doodlebugs.” Heroic British pilots in their “Spitfire” airplanes would attempt to divert the flying bombs from the populated areas, sometimes successful, and sometimes not.
Doodlebugs & Spitfires is available at Amazon.Com and its Kindle store, Amazon.co.uk and its Kindle store, Barnes & Noble, and any other good bookstore.
