Lessons from the edge : a memoir

Lessons from the edge A memoir

Maria L. Yovanovitch, 1958-

Book - 2022

An inspiring and urgent memoir by the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine. Marie Yovanovitch was at the height of her diplomatic career when it all came crashing down. In the middle of her third ambassadorship -- a rarity in the world of diplomacy -- she was targeted by a smear campaign and abruptly recalled from her post in Kyiv, Ukraine. In the months that followed, she endured personal tragedy while simultaneously being pulled into the blinding lights of the first impeachment inquiry of Donald Trump. It was a time of chaos and pain, for her and for the nation. Yet Yovanovitch was no stranger to instability and injustice. Born into a family that had survived Soviet and Nazi terror, she first saw the corrosive effect of corruption in Somalia... while cutting her teeth as a diplomat in the male-dominated world of the 1980s State Department. She was an eyewitness to the 1993 constitutional crisis in Russia and the street fighting in Moscow. And she rose to the top of her profession in the crucible of the former USSR, where she saw how President Vladimir Putin adeptly exploited corrupt leaders in neighboring countries and undermined their developing democracies. Nowhere was Putin's aggression clearer than in Ukraine, where Russia meddled in elections, launched cyberattacks, peddled misinformation, illegally annexed Crimea, invaded the Donbas, and attacked Ukrainian ships in the Black Sea. But when Yovanovitch was abruptly recalled from her post and Ukraine's democratically elected president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, found himself set upon by Trump, it became clear just how dangerously close to the edge America itself had strayed. Through it all, Yovanovitch tirelessly advocated for the Ukrainian people, while advancing U.S. interests and staying true to herself. When she made the courageous decision to participate in the impeachment inquiry -- over the objections of the Trump administration -- she earned the nation's respect, and her dignified response to the president's attacks won our hearts. She has reclaimed her own narrative, first with her lauded congressional testimony, and now with this powerful memoir: the dramatic saga of one woman's role at the vanguard of American foreign policy during a time of upheaval, for herself and for our country.

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Subjects
Yovanovitch, Maria L., > 1958-
Trump, Donald, > 1946- > Impeachment.
Ambassadors > United States > Biography.
Impeachments > United States.
United States > Politics and government > 2017-2021.
United States > Foreign relations > Ukraine.
Ukraine > Foreign relations > United States.
Autobiographies.
Genres
Autobiographies
Published
Boston : Mariner Books [2022]
Language
English
Main Author
Maria L. Yovanovitch, 1958- (author)
Edition
First edition
Item Description
Includes index.
Physical Description
xxii, 394 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some color), map ; 24 cm
ISBN
9780358457541
  • Prologue: "Pledge to serve"
  • Part I: Travelers (1921-1986). Origins ; Into the foreign service
  • Part II: Postings (1986-2016). Somalia ; The United Kingdom and the United States ; Russia ; Ukraine ; Kyrgyzstan ; Armenia
  • Part III: Homecoming (2016-2020). Return to Kyiv ; The transition ; Diplomacy 101 ; Warning signs ; Cut loose ; "I love Ukraine" ; Survival ; "The moment to decide" ; Three-dimensional chess ; No more tears ; "The best America has to offer"
  • Epilogue: Keep faith.
Review by Booklist Review

After her magnetic congressional testimony during Donald Trump's first impeachment trial, Yovanovitch was hailed as a "rock star," a "badass." She felt anything but. As a career public servant posted to danger zones in lands ruled by corrupt regimes from Somalia to Kyrgyzstan, Yovanovitch's pragmatic mantra was "keep your head down." Wherever her diplomatic missions took her, Yovanovitch epitomized foreign service office philosophy, hewing to the principle of representing American ideals and policies with dignity and integrity. This worked well for her until Trump and his henchmen came along. In a far-reaching memoir that traces her family's migration from Russia to North America and her own trajectory from shy private school student to ambitious State Department careerist, Yovanovitch divulges in granular detail the situation on the ground in every country she served while illuminating the deft juggling act required when one is charged with bringing democracy to nations mired in totalitarianism or authoritarianism. Nowhere was that task more challenging than in her posting as ambassador to Ukraine during the Trump administration, which set her in the crosshairs of nefarious politicians both abroad and at home. A superbly crafted and intimately revealing self-portrait of a true hero of American diplomacy. Pair this with Fiona Hill's There Is Nothing for You Here (2021).

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

The former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, who got unwillingly caught up in Donald Trump's first impeachment, examines corruption abroad and at home in this stinging memoir. Yovanovitch was removed from her ambassadorship in Kiev in 2019 amid fabricated accusations of collusion with Ukrainian figures to subvert the 2016 U.S. presidential election and claims that she "had spoken with 'disdain' about the Trump administration." As she writes, the allegations arose from efforts by Trump's lawyer Rudolph Giuliani and a Ukrainian prosecutor to tar candidate Joe Biden and his son Hunter with insinuations of corrupt dealings in Ukraine. Yovanovitch gives a gripping account of this Kafkaesque scandal, complete with Trump's drive-by tweets--"Everywhere Marie Yovanovitch went turned bad"--and her moving testimony at congressional impeachment hearings. She sets it within an engrossing recap of her diplomatic career in postings to Somalia and ex-Soviet nations, during which she was subjected to sexist indignities (while ambassador to Kyrgyzstan, she was asked by a press attaché to serve cookies to a reporter) and enmeshed in wrangles to promote reforms aimed at bolstering human rights and reducing rampant corruption in foreign governments (and, eventually, America's). Full of shrewd insights and bitter ironies, Yovanovitch's saga offers a revealing insider's take on the labyrinth of foreign policy and on one of the most sordid episodes of Trump's presidency. Photos. (Mar.)

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

A veteran Foreign Service officer tells all. In this fine memoir, Yovanovitch (b. 1958) chronicles her career in the Foreign Service, where she has served in a variety of posts, with an emphasis on the Soviet and post-Soviet world. Her father left the Soviet Union as a child, and her mother survived World War II in Nazi Germany. As immigrants in Canada, they met and married in 1958, moved to the U.S. in 1962, and raised a family on the small salary of a boarding school teacher. As hardworking as her parents, Marie excelled in high school and, later, at Princeton. After graduation, a Russian-language program in Moscow cemented her fascination with world affairs, and she joined the Foreign Service in 1986. The author writes about the sexism she experienced in the service, noting how "pale, male, and Yale" was a popular profile of its employees. One of her first assignments was Somalia, an impoverished, corrupt, and often dangerous failed state, but she did well. Tours in Uzbekistan and Moscow in the 1990s and Ukraine in 2001 solidified her expertise on Russia and its former provinces after the Soviet Union's collapse, and she rose to the top of her profession as ambassador to Kyrgyzstan in 2005, Armenia in 2008, and Ukraine in 2016. The author delivers captivating accounts of her ambassadorial duties, which included furthering American interests, discouraging and fighting corruption, and promoting capitalism, good government, human rights, and the rule of law. Although successful on many issues, Yovanovitch does not deny that the three ex-Soviet provinces where she served remain corrupt and ill-governed. She was ambassador to Ukraine in 2019 when then-President Donald Trump and his allies began pressuring its government to gather dirt on his rival, Joe Biden. Apparently, Yovanovitch showed insufficient enthusiasm for the job; after a nasty smear campaign, she was fired. A compelling memoir of diplomatic service behind the old Iron Curtain. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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