When daughters Anneke and Julia, then 8 and 10, stood where the infamous Berlin Wall had divided East and West through three decades, “they saw only manicured grass and bike and walking trails.”

“Let's get ice cream,” said one.

So how was their daddy to explain a world that had been defined by that grotesque Wall, and a Foreign Service career spanning these same peculiar years?

In tales that are funny, poignant, and provocative, Bob Dickerman recalls what it was “to fight the Cold War” as a self-described “working stiff diplomat” in Africa, Asia, Europe and the Caribbean. This is hands-on history as it's too rarely written.