On July 20, 1792, the body of Admiral John Paul Jones, Father of the American Navy, was buried in the Saint LouisCemetery on the outskirts of Paris. As the French Revolution was gathering steam, the unmarked location of Jones's grave was nobody's primary concern. And though the admiral was not forgotten to history, in time he was certainly lost beneath the soil in the City of Light. Luckily, Jones had been sealed in a lead-lined coffin filled with alcohol to preserve the body. In theory, if somebody could locate that coffin, Jones could be returned to the United States for a proper burial. That somebody was Horace Porter, Civil War hero, aide to General (and later President) Ulysses S. Grant, Republican Party fundraiser, and US ambassador to France from 1897 to 1905. Porter had been a driving force in the creation of Grant's Tomb, and he developed a similar sense of duty regarding the final interment of John Paul Jones. The Admiral and the Ambassador details Porter's long, relentless search for the lead-lined coffin, first through scraps of archive material and written recollections of funeral attendees, and then beneath the rickety buildings that had been constructed over what Porter believed to be the graveyard. Part history, part biography, and part detective story, The Admiral and the Ambassador is a fascinating look into the compelling real-life characters who populated the first century of the United States of America.

On July 20, 1792, the body of John Paul Jones, Father of the American Navy, was buried in the St. Louis Cemetery on the outskirts of Paris. The French Revolution was gathering steam, and soon the unmarked location of Jones's grave was nobody's primary concern, lost beneath the soil in the City of Light. Luckily, Jones had been sealed in a lead-lined coffin filled with alcohol to preserve the body. In theory, if somebody could locate that coffin, Jones could be returned to the United States for a proper burial. That somebody was Horace Porter, Civil War hero, aide to General (and later President) Ulysses S. Grant, Republican Party fundraiser, and US Ambassador to France from 1897 to 1905. The Admiral and the Ambassador details Porter's long, relentless search for Jones's lead-lined coffin, first through scraps of archive material and written recollections of funeral attendees, and then beneath the rickety buildings that had been constructed over the graveyard. And if he ever did find the coffin, he had return Jones to the United States for a worthy burial. The Admiral and the Ambassador is part history, part biography, and part detective story, and a fascinating look into the compelling, real-life characters who populated the first century of the United States of America. Veteran journalist Scott Martelle is the author of Detroit: A Biography, The Fear Within, and Blood Passion and currently writes for the Los Angeles Times.

Veteran diplomatic correspondent Paul Richter goes behind the battles and the headlines to show how American ambassadors are the unconventional warriors in the Muslim world—running local government, directing drone strikes, building nations, and risking their lives on the front lines. The tale’s heroes are a small circle of top career diplomats who have been an unheralded but crucial line of national defense in the past two decades of wars in the greater Middle East. In The Ambassadors, Paul Richter shares the astonishing, true-life stories of four expeditionary diplomats who “do the hardest things in the hardest places.” The book describes how Ryan Crocker helped rebuild a shattered Afghan government after the fall of the Taliban and secretly negotiated with the shadowy Iranian mastermind General Qassim Suleimani to wage war in Afghanistan and choose new leaders for post-invasion Iraq. Robert Ford, assigned to be a one-man occupation government for an Iraqi province, struggled to restart a collapsed economy and to deal with spiraling sectarian violence—and was taken hostage by a militia. In Syria at the eruption of the civil war, he is chased by government thugs for defying the country’s ruler. J. Christopher Stevens is smuggled into Libya as US Envoy to the rebels during its bloody civil war, then returns as ambassador only to be killed during a terror attach in Benghazi. War-zone veteran Anne Patterson is sent to Pakistan, considered the world’s most dangerous country, to broker deals that prevent a government collapse and to help guide the secret war on jihadists. “An important and illuminating read” (The Washington Post) and the winner of the prestigious Douglas Dillon Book Award from the American Academy of Diplomacy, The Ambassadors is a candid examination of the career diplomatic corps, America’s first point of contact with the outside world, and a critical piece of modern-day history.

As Japan's pre-Pearl Harbor ambassador to the United States, Admiral Nomura Kichisaburo (1877-1964) played a significant role in a tense and turbulent period in Japanese-US relations. This biography casts light on the life and career of this important figure.

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.

It’s 1990 and the Cold War is coming to an end, but the game of espionage continues on as America and the West prepares for the First Gulf War with Iraq. The career of longtime CIA officer, William Wythe, is also coming to a sad end at his final posting in Lisbon, Portugal. His last ten years have been spent mostly in an alcoholic blur since his wife died in a terrorist attack meant for him. The Chief of Station wants to be rid of him, a special counterintelligence section of the CIA suspects he may be a Russian mole and the high point of his dark weeks is anonymously playing piano at a local dive in the city two nights a week. But as is often the case in the “wilderness of mirrors” of espionage, all the facts and the people may not be as they seem. An unhappily married Brazilian woman is frequenting this jazz club and growing fonder of William, raising some hope that he may yet have a future worth living. She joins him on a private search for missing Hungarian royal jewels, which may have been hidden in Portugal towards the end of WWII. A modern neo-Nazi group is also on the hunt for those same jewels. All the players cross paths at the Clube de Jazz, which is run by an elderly Italian-American who’d been in America’s wartime O.S.S., the forerunner of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1873. The publishing house Anatiposi publishes historical books as reprints. Due to their age, these books may have missing pages or inferior quality. Our aim is to preserve these books and make them available to the public so that they do not get lost.