The Back Channel: A Memoir of American Diplomacy and the Case for Its Renewal

From America’s “secret diplomatic weapon” (The Atlantic), comes a memoir of service for five Presidents and ten Secretaries of State, an impassioned argument for renewing diplomacy as the tool of first resort in American statecraft.

Ambassador William J. Burns is the most distinguished and admired American diplomat of his generation. Over the course of four decades, he played a central role in the most consequential diplomatic episodes of his time—from the bloodless end of the Cold War to p...