This book follows a United States Foreign Service couple as they renew an official presence in Yemen. Arriving three years after the 1967 closure of the American embassy in Sanaa, the couple experimented with this unique form of "diplomacy under a foreign flag" when they opened up and managed the U.S. Interests Section (USINT) within the Italian Embassy. Set only eight years after the Republican Revolution had ousted a thousand-year-old dynasty of Shiite (Zaydi) Muslim imams, the memoir describes with both humor and respect the country's struggles in the early throes of becoming a modern,...