YOUR DIPLOMATS AT WORK: A Comedy in Seven Acts

Franklin E. Huffman
Vellum, 2011
278 Pages, 46 Illustrations
ISBN 978-0-9832451-7-9 Paperback

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About the Author

Huffman taught Thai, Cambodian, Vietnamese, and Southeast Asian linguistics as professor of linguistics and Asian studies at Yale University and at Cornell University. In 1985, Dr. Huffman joined the U.S. Foreign Service and served in the United Kingdom, Burma, Morocco, France, Washington, Cambodia (twice), New Zealand, and Chad. He retired from the Foreign Service in 1999.

Frank Huffman is the author of ten books on Southeast Asian languages and linguistics. He has spent some ten years in Asia, and has worked and traveled in more than eighty countries of the world. He and his wife Sanda, a professional interpreter, live in Washington, D.C.

About the book

Your Diplomats at Work is an account of the author’s sometimes comical, sometimes frustrating, but always enlightening adventures as a diplomat in seven countries. As a former academic who had worked and traveled in some sixty countries of the world before joining the Foreign Service, Huffman provides trenchant commentary on the history, culture, and political situation in each country.

Written with a light touch, the book critiques some of the stifling bureaucracy and resultant inefficiency of the U.S. Department of State, along with practical recommendations for improvement. In the Prologue he describes the circuitous route by which a Virginia farm boy became a professor and diplomat. This brief introductory account of the first fifty years of the author’s life establishes his credentials. Your Diplomats at Work is a richly detailed memoir of the author’s varied experiences across two careers.

This is a book in the ADST Memoirs and Occasional Papers Series.

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