A messy but illuminating look at life in the Foreign Service.
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.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 163
Publisher: Manuscript
Review Posted Online: May 4, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.
A coffee-table book celebrates Michelle Obama’s sense of fashion.
Illustrated with hundreds of full-color photographs, Obama’s chatty latest book begins with some school portraits from the author’s childhood in Chicago and fond memories of back-to-school shopping at Sears, then jumps into the intricacies of clothing oneself as the spouse of a presidential candidate and as the first lady. “People looked forward to the outfits, and once I got their attention, they listened to what I had to say. This is the soft power of fashion,” she says. Obama is grateful and frank about all the help she got along the way, and the volume includes a long section written by her primary wardrobe stylist, Koop—28 years old when she first took the job—and shorter sections by makeup artists and several hair stylists, who worked with wigs and hair extensions as Obama transitioned back to her natural hair, and grew out her bangs, at the end of her husband’s second term. Many of the designers of the author’s gowns, notably Jason Wu, who designed several of her more striking outfits, also contribute appreciative memories. Besides candid and more formal photographs, the volume features many sketches of her gowns by their designers, closeups on details of those gowns, and magazine covers from Better Homes & Gardens to Vogue. The author writes that as a Black woman, “I was under a particularly white-hot glare, constantly appraised for whether my outfits were ‘acceptable’ and ‘appropriate,’ the color of my skin somehow inviting even more judgment than the color of my dresses.” Overall, though, this is generally a canny, upbeat volume, with little in the way of surprising revelations.
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9780593800706
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 7, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.
A former New York City dancer reflects on her zesty heyday in the 1970s.
Discovered on a Manhattan street in 2020 and introduced on Stanton’s Humans of New York Instagram page, Johnson, then 76, shares her dynamic history as a “fiercely independent” Black burlesque dancer who used the stage name Tanqueray and became a celebrated fixture in midtown adult theaters. “I was the only black girl making white girl money,” she boasts, telling a vibrant story about sex and struggle in a bygone era. Frank and unapologetic, Johnson vividly captures aspects of her former life as a stage seductress shimmying to blues tracks during 18-minute sets or sewing lingerie for plus-sized dancers. Though her work was far from the Broadway shows she dreamed about, it eventually became all about the nightly hustle to simply survive. Her anecdotes are humorous, heartfelt, and supremely captivating, recounted with the passion of a true survivor and the acerbic wit of a weathered, street-wise New Yorker. She shares stories of growing up in an abusive household in Albany in the 1940s, a teenage pregnancy, and prison time for robbery as nonchalantly as she recalls selling rhinestone G-strings to prostitutes to make them sparkle in the headlights of passing cars. Complemented by an array of revealing personal photographs, the narrative alternates between heartfelt nostalgia about the seedier side of Manhattan’s go-go scene and funny quips about her unconventional stage performances. Encounters with a variety of hardworking dancers, drag queens, and pimps, plus an account of the complexities of a first love with a drug-addled hustler, fill out the memoir with personality and candor. With a narrative assist from Stanton, the result is a consistently titillating and often moving story of human struggle as well as an insider glimpse into the days when Times Square was considered the Big Apple’s gloriously unpolished underbelly. The book also includes Yee’s lush watercolor illustrations.
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.Pub Date: July 12, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-250-27827-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2022
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