Government In Unusual Places

So, I've been reading Julia Child's My Life In France as my most recent book, and though I picked it up basically for the descriptions of cooking, it turns out, her memoir is also a fascinating chronicle of what it was like to be in the State Department at a time when reductions in force were taking place, the U.S. Information Service was becoming the U.S. Information Agency, and Sen. Joseph McCarthy was sending his staff abroad to investigate State Department work overseas.

(Quick background: Julia Child met her husband while working for the OSS, the precursor to the CIA in Sri Lanka. They moved to Paris when he was posted there for his job at the USIS. So America owes the State Department for Julia Child's promotion of French cooking.)

Child's descriptions make it sound like an incredibly successful experience. Her husband's budget to buy books for local libraries falls dramatically, his staff keeps getting whittled away, his boss in Mareille, their second posting, is someone Child accuses of having been successful by being extremely cautious and dull. State Department buffs should definitely take note. But for anyone connected with the federal government, it's an interesting experience to read a mainstream memoir that's full of references to RIFs and budget errata, in other words, where government is a fully integrated part of the life of someone who doesn't work for it directly, rather than an impenetrable tangle.