Thayer was a long-time member of the U.S. diplomatic service who also served in the OSS. His most memorable posts were in Kabul during WWII and, for many years, in the Soviet Union.

Diplomat, published in 1959, is a non-fiction work, describing the in's and out's of life in the diplomatic corps, with a history of international diplomacy worked in throughout, as well as a history of American diplomatic efforts, the attitudes of Congress towards the U.S. foreign service, an the evolution of the infighting between the different civilian service branches and how they affected American diplomacy. A lot of this book is interesting, though the details about things like protocol and rankings became tedious. I believe that was intentional, a way of demonstrating the frequent tedium and absurdity of the life of the diplomat. Thayer's attitude is that it's the ambassador on the ground who can gather the most useful information and get the most diplomacy done, and that high ranking government officials swooping in to conduct negotiations may end up doing more harm than good. At any rate, as I mentioned, this book is usually interesting, though not always fascinating.

Thayer does offer plenty of personal anecdotes, observations and opinions, which make the reading more lively. One recurrent theme is that lawyers and businessmen, contrary to popular belief, do not make good diplomats, because they are used to living in a world where contracts are enforceable. What you need, says Thayer, perhaps not surprisingly, are trained, professional diplomats:

Diplomacy mediates not between right and wrong but between conflicting interests. It seeks to compromise not between legal equities but between national aspirations. Among nations, despite the efforts of statesmen since Grotius, no ordered system with a unified process of law enforcement exists. Furthermore, a nation's interests, aspirations, and the power to satisfy them vary from year to year, indeed from day to day. What yesterday was satisfactory may tomorrow be intolerable and unenforceable.

Thayer gives as an example the treaty arranged with Germany after World War II when the U.S. wanted to return national sovereignty to Germany. A treaty was negotiated by a team extremely lawyer-heavy on the U.S. side in which "The abolition of cartels, the guarantees of democratic government, the punishment of war criminals, and a thousand other details were negotiated by a host of lawyer and legal experts as though a system of law existed into which the agreements might fit. . . . (but) by granting West Germany sovereignty, the treaty fundamentally altered the power relationship of the signatories. The limitations that it sought to impose upon the Germans became meaningless because the power to enforce them no longer existed. Those obligations the German government assumed which corresponded with her national interests remained in force. The rest, in a matter of a few years, vanished all but unnoticed." The point being, of course, that experienced professional diplomats would have seen this coming and worked the treaty otherwise to make it more binding.

What is fascinating is Thayer's own story. A quick look at Wikipedia reveals that by the time this book was written, Thayer was six years past being hounded out of the foreign service by McCarthy and Hoover for supposed Communist sympathies and, horror of horrors, homosexuality. Here's the link to the bio: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_W._Thayer. Thayer's papers are in the Truman Library: http://www.trumanlibrary.org/hstpaper/thayerc.htm

I love to read relatively obscure books written in another era and describing an aspect of that era from within. This books fits that well, despite its frequent dry patches, which lower my overall rating to 3 1/2 stars. ( )