Join Sandy’s Books and Bakery and the Rochester Public Library for a book event with former State Department staffer turned Rochester resident and author!
Please join this discussion with author Lizzy Shackelford, as she shares her experience as a U.S. diplomat in war-torn South Sudan and the lessons she learned about the failings of U.S. foreign policy.
Please register in advance. Sign up here: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZUodO-gqTgpH9PylxWEmnsQwbD13oMdQ6nN
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.
Official book release is May 12 and you can pick this book up at Sandy’s!
Book description from bookshop.org:
A young diplomat’s account of her assignment in South Sudan, a firsthand example of US foreign policy that has failed in its diplomacy and accountability around the world.
In 2017, Elizabeth Shackelford wrote a pointed resignation letter to her then boss, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. She had watched as the State Department was gutted, and now she urged him to stem the bleeding by showing leadership and commitment to his diplomats and the country. If he couldn’t do that, she said, “I humbly recommend that you follow me out the door.”
With that, she sat down to write her story and share an urgent message.
In The Dissent Channel, former diplomat Elizabeth Shackelford shows that this is not a new problem. Her experience in 2013 during the precarious rise and devastating fall of the world’s newest country, South Sudan, exposes a foreign policy driven more by inertia than principles, to suit short-term political needs over long-term strategies.
Through her story, Shackelford makes policy and politics come alive. And in navigating both American bureaucracy and the fraught history and present of South Sudan, she conveys an urgent message about the devolving state of US foreign policy.