Inside a U.S. Embassy is widely recognized as the essential guide to the Foreign Service. This all-new third edition takes readers to more than fifty U.S. missions around the world, introducing Foreign Service professionals and providing detailed descriptions of their jobs and firsthand accounts of diplomacy in action. In addition to profiles of diplomats and specialists around the world-from the ambassador to the consular officer, the public diplomacy officer to the security specialist-is a selection from more than twenty countries of day-in-the-life accounts, each describing an actual day on.

Who works in an embassy? What do diplomats actually do? Inside a U.S. Embassy offers an up-close and personal look into the lives of the diplomats and specialists who make up the U.S. Foreign Service, taking readers inside embassies and consulates in more than fifty countries, providing detailed descriptions of Foreign Service jobs and first-hand accounts of diplomacy in action. Gain a sense of the key role played by each member of an embassy team from Paris to Kabul, from Bogota to Beijing, and places in between. Travel into the rainforests of Thailand with an environmental affairs officer, face rampaging militias with a political officer in East Timor, and join an ambassador on a midnight trip into a Macedonian refugee camp to quell a riot. The book includes profiles of diplomats and specialists around the world serving in Foreign Service positions -- from the ambassador to the security officer, the consular officer to the IT specialist. Also included is a selection of day-in-the-life accounts from seventeen different countries, each describing an actual day on the job. The story section includes twenty-six tales from the field that give a sense of the extraordinary: the coups, the evacuations, the civil wars, the hardships and rewards of representing America to the world. Inside a U.S. Embassy was published by the American Foreign Service Association in 2003, and updated and revised in 2005. Over 70,000 copies have sold.

In Embassies Under Siege, eyewitnesses present nine representative crises in vivid detail, examining the recurring challenges posed to diplomatic missions. The authors, all career Foreign Service officers, provide more than just frightening firsthand accounts of vulnerable people facing great peril. They also suggest useful lessons for protecting diplomatic personnel abroad. Many of these suggestions have already been implemented, and as old problems continue and new crises develop, the lessons learned from these cases prove invaluable. Through stories of great physical courage, professionalism, and resourcefulness, Embassies Under Siege paints a clear picture of the unique type of individual serving in the Foreign Service today.

An insider account by Iran's first female vice-president, Massoumeh Ebtekar, of the 1979 takeover of the American Embassy in Tehran.

The U.S. Foreign Service and the American Foreign Service Association were born together in 1924. In this second edition, released on their centennial, author Harry Kopp chronicles the evolution of the Foreign Service and the events and personalities that shaped AFSA into what it is today. Published by Foreign Service Books, The Voice of the Foreign Service combines an institutional history of America's diplomatic service from its earliest days to the present, with the twinned story of the American Foreign Service Association and its transformation from a benevolent society to an independent professional organization and exclusive employee representative of all members of the Foreign Service.