In Spoilsmen in a “Flowery Fairyland,” Jack L. Hammersmith examines in detail the first eleven American ministers to Japan, exploring the information, expectations, and values they took with them and how they shaped U.S. diplomacy with Japan in the late nineteenth century. Of particular interest, he shows that the issue of trade, a dominant contemporary concern, was an ongoing nineteenth-century problem as well.

Pattern of Circles is a success story, for its author and his country. John E. Dolibois was born December 4, 1918, in Luxembourg. His mother died weeks later, and he was raised by an older sister until she left for Akron, Ohio, with her American husband. In 1931, John came to Akron with his father and thus began a fascinating life journey.

Placing the bilateral relationship in a global context, this military and diplomatic history examines the importance of ideology, material interests, and power in U.S.-Latin American relations. Historian Bradley Coleman demonstrates how the making of the Colombian-American alliance exemplified hemispheric interconnectedness, a condition of ever-growing importance in the twenty-first century. Employing available Colombian and U.S. archival sources, this book fills a gap in the literature on U.S. relations with less developed countries and provides new research on the origins an development of the U.S–Colombian alliance that will serve as an invaluable resource for scholars of U.S. and Latin American diplomacy.

Filling a major gap in the literature, Modernity and National Identity in the United States and East Asia, 1895–1919 is a comprehensive, thought-provoking intellectual history of American, Chinese, and Japanese thinking on modernity, national identity, and internationalism during the early twentieth century. Those with an interest in U.S. foreign relations, women’s and gender history, and U.S.-Asian relations will find this an innovative and fascinating title.

To the degree that the nation had a coherent diplomacy during the first Roosevelt administration, it was based on Hull’s vision of a liberal international economic order. By outlining Hull’s crucial role in the passage and implementation of the Trade Agreements Act, Cautious Visionary will restore Hull’s reputation as one of the major political and diplomatic figures of the first half of our century.

A down-to-earth New Englander with an abiding love of the outdoors, Briggs was devoted to his wife and family as well as to his country. Proud Servant is full of insights about the practice of diplomacy in this century and provides a fascinating account of the modern Foreign Service.

Peter S. Bridges’s service as an American ambassador to Somalia capped his three decades as a career officer in the American Foreign Service. Safirka, a frank description of his experiences in Somalia and elsewhere, offers pointed assessments of American foreign policy and policymakers. Bridges recounts his service in Panama during a time of turmoil over the Canal; in Moscow during the Cuban missile crisis; in Prague for bleak years after the Soviet invasion; in Rome when Italian terrorists first began to target Americans; and in key positions in three Washington agencies.

The Libyan Arena examines Anglo-American plans for North African decolonization and focuses specifically on the events preceding the UN discussions that led to the creation of the modern Libyan state. Based primarily on sources at the National Archives in Washington, D.C., and newly opened files at the Public Record Office in Kew, England, this study represents the most accurate and comprehensive account to date of the CFM’s work in North Africa. Students of 20th-cebntury U.S.-British diplomatic history, post-World War II African and Middle Eastern history, transnational policymaking, decolonization, and the early cold war era will find much of interest here.

The First Amendment of the United States Constitution mandates that government and religious institutions remain separate and independent of each other. Yet, the influence of religion on American leaders and their political decisions cannot be refuted. Leading Them to the Promised Land is the first book to look at how Presbyterian Covenant Theology affected U.S. president Woodrow Wilson’s foreign policy during the Mexican Revolution.

The Diplomacy of Pragmatism sets Britain’s role in the formation of NATO, not in the context of orthodox, revisionist or post-revisionist approaches to the Cold War, but in terms of what has become known as “depolarization.” This approach emphasizes the distinctive and leading roles of other countries, apart from the Soviet Union and the United States, in the early Cold War period.