American Ambassadors: The Past, Present, and Future of America’s Diplomats

Diplomats and Diplomacy

by Dennis C. Jett

Contents Introduction 1. A Brief History of the Title 2. Who Gets to Be an Ambassador - The Traditional Route 3. The Nontraditional Route 4. The Last Steps - Clearance and Confirmation 5. What An Ambassador Does 6. Where Ambassadors Go 7. Why It Matters and How It Might Be Changed Acknowledgements Appendices Endnotes Index

297 pages, Hardcover

First published December 17, 2014

Reviews

[Greg · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting history of American diplomacy.

[Alex Radtke · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting look into a deliberately opaque process, there are plenty of anecdotes and tidbits to make this book worth recommending to someone with a passing interest. The introduction to the book, focused on John Lodge as an exemplar for the failings of the American diplomatic corps, was enough to convince me to check this out of the library. The quick and breezy history of American ambassadors (and plenipotentiaries or what-have-you) is engaging and does a wonderful job at placing the current state of affairs in context. The book focuses mostly on the process of becoming an ambassador, with a heavy emphasis in the latter sections on political appointees. Even the chapter, "What an Ambassador Does" does not go into the kind of detail that one might expect about exactly WHAT an ambassador DOES. There is also a lack of flow in the ideas of the book, which is particularly prevalent in the concluding chapter. There's an over-reliance on small case histories that leads to a somewhat stilted structure, which is then further exacerbated by some odd attempts at segueing (for example, there's a free-floating section where he tries to condemn the "fact-free" writing of Dick Morris, and while Dick deserves such condemnation, it doesn't gel with the surrounding text).