An informative, behind-the-scenes look at one black woman’s rise through the ranks of the Foreign Service when few others...
How a young black woman from Boston rose to a long, distinguished career in foreign service.
In this highly detailed autobiography, Elam-Thomas (Director, Diplomacy Program/Univ. of Central Florida), with co-author Robison, shares her life story, from her childhood in Boston all the way through the ranks of the U.S. State Department’s Foreign Service. Overall, she spent 42 years as a diplomat around the world. The author, who is younger than her siblings by almost two decades, narrates her family’s early history, from her great-grandparents, who might have been slaves, to her parents’ first meeting to the accomplishments of her siblings, before jumping into her own life. At Simmons College in 1962, Elam-Thomas was accepted into the Experiment in International Living’s Student Exchange Program and lived in Lyon for the summer, which expanded her view of the world and planted the seed that would lead her into life as a diplomat. She worked in the Nixon administration as assistant cultural affairs officer in Senegal, then moved on to Greece, Turkey, Cyprus, and many other assignments before returning to act as ambassador to Senegal. Throughout her world experiences, she continued to learn from the people and cultures she encountered, especially regarding the importance of listening. “I know that listening is the most effective approach to meaningful dialogue in any setting,” she writes. “Listening is an art….It is called respect. It is called appreciation. It is called anticipation. And it is called leadership.” Throughout, Elam-Thomas includes anecdotal moments that help break up the dry recounting of the sometimes-extraneous details of her decades of service (she retired in 2005). For those interested in becoming diplomats, the book effectively shows the high standards required.
An informative, behind-the-scenes look at one black woman’s rise through the ranks of the Foreign Service when few others like her were serving as diplomats.Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-61234-950-3
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Potomac Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2017
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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