The Good American

<p><strong>From&nbsp;the&nbsp;<em>New York Time</em>s bestselling author of&nbsp;<em>The&nbsp;Revenge of Geography</em>&nbsp;comes a sweeping yet intimate story of&nbsp;the&nbsp;most influential humanitarian you've never heard of&mdash;Bob Gersony, who spent four decades in crisis zones around&nbsp;the&nbsp;world.</strong></p> <p><strong>"One of the best accounts examining American humanitarian pursuits over the past fifty years . . . With still greater challenges on the horizon, we will need to find and empower more people like Bob Gersony&mdash;both idealistic and pragmatic&mdash;who can help make the world a more secure place."&mdash;<em>The Washington Post</em></strong></p> <p>In his long career as an acclaimed journalist covering&nbsp;the "hot" moments of&nbsp;the&nbsp;Cold War and its aftermath, bestselling author Robert D. Kaplan often found himself crossing paths with Bob Gersony, a consultant for&nbsp;the&nbsp;U.S. State Department whose quiet dedication and consequential work made a deep impression on Kaplan.</p> <p>Gersony, a high school dropout later awarded a Bronze Star for his service in Vietnam, conducted on-the-ground research for&nbsp;the U.S. government in virtually every war and natural-disaster zone in&nbsp;the&nbsp;world. In Thailand, Central and South America, Sudan, Chad, Mozambique, Rwanda, Gaza, Bosnia, North Korea, Iraq, and beyond, Gersony never flinched from entering dangerous areas that diplomats could not reach, sometimes risking his own life. Gersony's behind-the&nbsp;scenes fact-finding, which included interviews with hundreds of refugees and displaced persons from each war zone and natural-disaster area, often challenged the&nbsp;assumptions and received wisdom of&nbsp;the&nbsp;powers that be, on both&nbsp;the&nbsp;left and&nbsp;the&nbsp;right. In nearly every case, his advice and recommendations made American&nbsp;policy at once smarter and more humane&mdash;often dramatically so.</p> <p>In Gersony, Kaplan saw a powerful example of how&nbsp;American diplomacy should be conducted. In a work that exhibits Kaplan's signature talent for combining travel and geography with sharp political analysis,&nbsp;<em>The Good American</em>&nbsp;tells Gersony's powerful life story. Set during&nbsp;the&nbsp;State Department's golden age, this is a story about the loneliness, sweat, and tears and&nbsp;the&nbsp;genuine courage that characterized Gersony's work in far-flung places. It is also a celebration of ground-level reporting: a page-turning demonstration, by one of our finest geopolitical thinkers, of how getting an up-close, worm's-eye view of crises and applying sound reason can elicit world-changing results.</p>