The actions and decisions of the Northern Department of the Foreign Office at a time of great international tension and conflict

For more than a decade, Ron Capps, serving as both a senior military intelligence officer and as a Foreign Service officer for the U.S. Department of State, was witness to war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and genocide. From government atrocities in Kosovo, to the brutal cruelties perpetrated in several conflicts in central Africa, the wars in both Aghanistan and Iraq, and culminating in genocide in Darfur, Ron acted as an intelligence collector and reporter but was diplomatically restrained from taking preventative action in these conflicts. The cumulative effect of these experiences, combined with the helplessness of his role as an observer, propelled him into a deep depression and a long bout with PTSD, which nearly caused him to take his own life. Seriously Not All Right is a memoir that provides a unique perspective of a professional military officer and diplomat who suffered (and continues to suffer) from PTSD. His story, and that of his recovery and his newfound role as founder and teacher of the Veterans Writing Project, is an inspiration and a sobering reminder of the cost of all wars, particularly those that appeared in the media and to the general public as merely sidelines in the unfolding drama of world events.

In Defending Democracy in Cold War Finland, Marek Fields offers a thorough account on the various informational and cultural strategies Britain and the United States used during the early Cold War decades in order to increase their influence and contain communism in Finland. The book shows that by using propaganda and cultural diplomacy in an exceptionally challenging environment, the two Western powers were able to achieve their main objectives in the region, i.e. to defend democracy and strengthen Finland’s attachment to the West, surprisingly well. Making use of a large variety of British, American and Finnish archives, Fields proves that the Western countries’ interest in Finland during the Cold War was stronger than it has previously been realised.

Finland Investment and Business Guide - Strategic and Practical Information