Becoming a good neighbor among dictators: the U.S. foreign service in Quatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras

Very few works of history, if any, delve into the daily interactions of U.S.

Foreign Service members in Latin America during the era of Roosevelt's Good Neighbor Policy.

But as Jorrit van den Berk argues, the encounters between these rank-and-file diplomats and local officials reveal the complexities, procedures, intrigues, and shifting alliances that characterized the precarious balance of U.S. foreign relations with right-wing dictatorial regimes.

Using accounts from 22 ministers and ambassadors, 'Becoming a Good Neighbor among Dictators' is a careful, sophisticated account of how the U.S.

Foreign Service implemented ever-changing State Department directives from the 1930s through the Second World War and early Cold War, and in so doing, transformed the U.S.-Central American relationship.