Inside a U.S. Embassy: Diplomacy at Work, All-New, Third Edition of the Essential Guide to the Foreign Service

Shawn Dorman

Apr 2011 · Potomac Books, Inc.

About this ebook

Who works in an embassy? What do diplomats actually do? Inside a U.S. Embassy offers an up-close and personal look into the lives of the diplomats and specialists who make up the U.S. Foreign Service, taking readers inside embassies and consulates in more than fifty countries, providing detailed descriptions of Foreign Service jobs and first-hand accounts of diplomacy in action. 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. The book includes profiles of diplomats and specialists around the world serving in Foreign Service positions -- from the ambassador to the security officer, the consular officer to the IT specialist. Also included is a selection of day-in-the-life accounts from seventeen different countries, each describing an actual day on the job. The story section includes twenty-six tales from the field that give a sense of the extraordinary: the coups, the evacuations, the civil wars, the hardships and rewards of representing America to the world. Inside a U.S. Embassy was published by the American Foreign Service Association in 2003, and updated and revised in 2005. Over 70,000 copies have sold.

Ratings and reviews

“Foreign Service diplomats and specialists are truly the unsung heroes of American foreign policy.” This statement embodies the all-new third edition of Inside a U.S. Embassy: DIPLOMACY AT WORK. The editor, Shawn Dorman, is a former diplomat and clearly no stranger to the inner workings of the Foreign Service. This book is indeed an essential guide to all things diplomatic as she elaborates upon the broad spectrum of positions, personalities and experience that work abroad in a U.S. Embassy entails. The five sections carefully dissect and outline the roles of each essential officer, the lives that they lead abroad, journal entries detailing personal experience, the embassy machine in action, closing with tips and advice for prospective entry level officers. Not only does Dorman relay these details through matter-of-fact descriptions, engaging diagrams, lists, maps and photos from around the world, she also incorporates an empathetic aspect through inclusion of the emotions that accompany international friendships, constant uprooting of families, the trials of culture barriers, and many other obstacles that our nation’s Foreign Service Officers face every day – in service of us. We are finally able to get an inside view into the lives of everyone – spouses, entry level officers, ambassadors, security officers and the like – who plays an essential role in America’s foreign diplomacy in places far and wide - from a Tandem in India to a mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, to everywhere in between. This is truly a guide into the inner workings of the machine that is a U.S. Embassy and Dorman paints a thorough, realistic, and all-encompassing picture of every working screw. This book would be useful for anyone thinking about a diplomatic career or anyone curious about what our diplomats do inside those embassy gates.

About the author

Shawn Dorman is the associate editor of the Foreign Service Journal and directs the book program for the American Foreign Service Association. She has written extensively on issues related to the diplomatic career. A former U.S. Foreign Service political officer, Dorman has served in Kyrgyzstan, Indonesia, and Russia and in the State Department Operations Center in Washington, DC. She lives with her family outside Baltimore.