Back Channel

A masterful diplomatic memoir ( The Washington Post ) from CIA director and career ambassador William J. Burns, from his service under five presidents to his personal encounters with Vladimir Putin and other world leadersan impassioned argument for the enduring value of diplomacy in an increasingly volatile world. Over the course of more than three decades as an American diplomat, William J. Burns played a central role in the most consequential diplomatic episodes of his timefrom the bloodless end of the Cold War to the collapse of postCold War relations with Putins Russia, from post9/11 tumult in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the Middle East to the secret nuclear talks with Iran. In The Back Channel, Burns recounts, with novelistic detail and incisive analysis, some of the seminal moments of his career. Drawing on a trove of newly declassified cables and memos, he gives readers a rare inside look at American diplomacy in action. His dispatches from war-torn Chechnya and Qaddafis bizarre camp in the Libyan desert and his warnings of the Perfect Storm that would be unleashed by the Iraq War will reshape our understanding of historyand inform the policy debates of the future. Burns sketches the contours of effective American leadership in a world that resembles neither the zero-sum Cold War contest of his early years as a diplomat nor the unipolar moment of American primacy that followed. Ultimately, The Back Channel is an eloquent, deeply informed, and timely story of a life spent in service of American interests abroad. It is also a powerful reminder, in a time of great turmoil, of the enduring importance of diplomacy.