In this blend of memoir and how-to guide, a man details his career as a diplomat in hopes of inspiring others to follow in his footsteps.

There are two ways to become an ambassador for the United States, explains Armbruster wryly at the beginning of this volume. One is to get rich, support a winning presidential candidate, and accept your appointment as a reward for your efforts. The second, more satisfying way is to rise through the Foreign Service. Using his own story to illustrate the process, the former ambassador to the Marshall Islands steers would-be diplomats through a career of international relations: “This book is for those of you who are curious about the world, and sure that there is a place for you in the international firmament. Why not ambassador? I hope this proves to be a little bit of a flight plan for you on how to get there. In today’s uncertain world, I know one thing, we need you.” A childhood fan of Homer’s country-hopping Odyssey, Armbruster got his first chance to live abroad at age 17 when he served as a nanny for a diplomat stationed in Moscow. The author got married right after college and—just for the fun of it—spent his honeymoon with his new wife, Kathy, on a Yugoslavian freighter bound for Casablanca. After several years of working as a journalist in Hawaii, he sat for the Foreign Service exam at 30. He was sworn in and given his first assignment: Helsinki. Subsequent tours included Havana; Nuevo Laredo, Mexico; Kabul; and even the North Pole. Each assignment was a learning experience, but more importantly, each was a grand adventure for an idealist who loved to travel and serve his country.

Armbruster succeeds in demystifying the process of becoming a diplomat, which is—in his description—much more achievable than many might suspect. Readers will enjoy his encounters across the globe, from trying to get a bridge built faster in Tajikistan to dealing with the legacy of American nuclear testing in the Marshall Islands. The accounts are marbled with self-deprecating humor: “I smiled and said, ‘Are those your parents?’ I could see Kathy bury her face in her hands. The Consul General drew himself up to full attention, ‘No. That is the emperor and empress of Japan.’ ” The spine of the book is an interview Armbruster gave Mark Tauber of the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training. The author uses his answers as a jumping-off point for more detailed discussions of his experiences. This contributes, in part, to the book’s somewhat fragmentary structure, in which information is frequently repeated and the narrative lurches forward and backward in time. Armbruster only half commits to the how-to dimension of the book, making the work’s didacticism somewhat awkward—a traditional memoir would likely have achieved the same purpose. That said, he is a concise and amusing storyteller, and he certainly makes a career in the State Department sound tempting.

A messy but illuminating look at life in the Foreign Service.

In Armbruster’s novel, Odysseus and Penelope set forth in search of new lands.

Having at last returned home after 20 years away and successfully vanquished Penelope’s suitors, Odysseus must set sail again on the open sea. During his journey to Hades, Tiresias had prophesied that he would make another voyage, carrying an oar “to a place where they will not know the sea, nor eat their food salted” and where, crucially, they will not recognize the oar he carries. Upon finding these people, he must make a sacrifice to Poseidon, who cursed him after he blinded Polyphemus, the Cyclops. When he reveals his plans to Penelope, she insists on coming with him. Together they set forth with a crew of sailors, leaving their son Telemachus to rule Ithaca in their absence. Their journey proves an exhausting fight for survival through the deserts of the Sahara, over the Arabian Sea to India, and into the Pacific. Along the way they battle brigands and bandits, narrowly evade the jaws of a majestic tiger, sail a boat made of woven papyrus in crocodile-infested waters, navigate a series of treacherous cataracts where archers hidden in the rocks attempt to kill them, endure a deadly storm at sea, and scale high mountains to meet a guru who lives at the roof of the world. Odysseus, meanwhile, faces a series of tests—chief among them the temptation to abandon their quest and live out the rest of his days in peace and plenty. Having left India, he and Penelope sail north toward a land of perpetual ice and mist, where hides of beasts are used as fur and the reindeer is venerated. There, guided by the gods and the stars, they face their most formidable challenge.

Drawing inspiration from a long poetic tradition in which Odysseus makes a final voyage after the events in Homer, Armbruster’s novel is a vibrant travelogue of the remotest reaches of the classical world. Early chapters, in which Odysseus tours the sites he saw on his first voyage, are reminiscent of the second part of The Pilgrim’s Progress (1684), but the story picks up once he and Penelope escape familiar environs. The bulk of the book, consisting of journeys over land, river, and sea through Asia, Africa and the frozen lands of the north, is one part Marco Polo and one part Around the World in Eighty Days (1873). Like Christopher Nolan’s recent film adaptation of The Odyssey (2026), Armbruster keeps the proceedings grounded: Magic and monsters are largely absent, apart from the occasional run-in with mysterious humans who may or may not be gods (a necessary concession in a more skeptical age). This has the effect of imbuing the real world with a sense of extraordinary enchantment and mystery: When Odysseus glimpses a striped horse or an enormous beast of burden with a trumpet-like snout, we sense something of the wonder that the zebra and the elephant must have struck in early explorers. Only late in the book, with the arrival of Pegasus, do things take a turn for the explicitly mythical.

A highly enjoyable continuation of this classic Homeric tale.