HOW TO BECOME AN AMBASSADOR

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.