Status Updates From AMERICAN DIPLOMATS: The For...

Great primary source history!

I've stalled on this one - just can't make myself read of the bombing of PanAm 103 - spent years walking past the memorial below the SU Hall of Languages for the 30+ Syracuse ppl lost on the flight. But I don't want to skip it either.

went from dealings w/SAmer dictators to murder of an Amer ambassador in Kabul while members of his mission worked feverishly 1 floor down to rescue him to the experience of the Charge d'affaires when the Tehran embassy was overrun to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon + then, w/a jolt, on to the rather hilarious tales of international negotiation from Elinor Constable - whirlwind chapters

1960's civil war in the Congo's Katanga w/political attache Terry McNamara = intense

simultaneously listening to the Kennan bio + realizing why John Melby's name sounded so familiar - they were both posted to Moscow at the same time. The stories in this book - so interesting, but so short - wishing more detail

startd on plane back fr Guilin - writing a bit stilted + some seem 2b transcripts of interviews not written reports b/c of the way info is expressed (repeated phrases + delayed recall) - individual voices v clear tho. Wondering where I've heard the name John Stewart Service b4 - his rprts say he was stationed in Kunming when it was Yunnanfu + later roamed among both Kuomintang + Mao Zedong's Communists during WWII