Research Catalog

Madam Ambassador : three years of diplomacy, dinner parties, and democracy in Budapest / Eleni Tsakopoulos Kounalakis.

Title

Madam Ambassador : three years of diplomacy, dinner parties, and democracy in Budapest / Eleni Tsakopoulos Kounalakis.

Author

Kounalakis, Eleni

Publication

New York ; London : The New Press, 2015.
©2015

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Status	Format	Access	Call Number	Item Location
Request for On-site Use Request Scan How do I pick up this item and when will it be ready?	Text	Request in advance	E901.1.K68 A3 2015	Off-site

Holdings

Details

Description

290 pages, 16 unnumbered plates : illustrations; 25 cm

Summary

"A helicopter ride to visit troops in the Afghanistan war zone, a tense meeting with the newly elected Prime Minister, and...a wild boar hunt! Eleni Kounalakis was forty-three and a land developer in Sacramento, California, when she was tapped by President Barack Obama to serve as the U.S. ambassador to Hungary under Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. During her tenure, from 2010 to 2013, Hungary was a key ally in the U.S. military surge, held elections in which a center-right candidate gained a two-thirds supermajority and rewrote the country's constitution, and grappled with the rise of Hungarian nationalism and anti-semitism. The first Greek-American woman ever to serve as a U.S. ambassador, Kounalakis recounts her training at the State Department's 'charm school' and her three years of diplomatic life in Budapest--from protocols about seating, salutations, and embassy security to what to do when the deposed King of Greece hands you a small chocolate crown (eat it, of course!). A cross between a foreign policy memoir and an inspiring personal family story--her immigrant Greek father went from agricultural day laborer to land developer and major Democratic party activist--Madam Ambassador draws back the curtain on what it is like to represent the U.S. government abroad as well as how American embassies around the world function"--

Subject

Genre/Form

Biographies

Bibliography (note)

Includes bibliographical references.

Processing Action (note)

committed to retain

Contents

Boar Hunt -- Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary -- "One Eye Is Smiling, One Eye Is Crying" -- A Long Way from Home -- How Do You Become a U.S. Ambassador? -- Viktor Orban's Revolution -- Family Life -- The Curse of Turan and the Fourth of July -- Travels with Csaba -- Aghanistan : In the War Zone -- God and Country -- Presidency of the European Union -- Golden Week -- Seven Hundred New Laws -- Family Life...the Royal Treatment -- The Three-Legged Stool of Democracy -- Anti-Semitism : The Bizarre and the Tragic -- Security Overseas -- The New Deal, Same as the Old Deal? -- Afghanistan, Revisited -- Farewell -- Letter from Secretary John Kerry to Ambassador Kounalakis.

ISBN

9781620971116
1620971119
9781620971123 (canceled/invalid)

LCCN

^^2014047908

OCLC

891618868
SCSB-12609304

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library