INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER | An inspiring and urgent memoir by the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine—a pioneering diplomat who spent her career advancing democracy in the post-Soviet world, and who electrified the nation by speaking truth to power during the first impeachment of President Trump.
By the time she became U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch had seen her share of corruption, instability, and tragedy in developing countries. But it came as a shock when, in early 2019, she was recalled from her post after a smear campaign by President Trump's personal attorney and his associates—men operating outside of normal governmental channels, and apparently motivated by personal gain. Her courageous participation in the subsequent impeachment inquiry earned Yovanovitch the nation's respect, and her dignified response to the president's attacks won our hearts. She has reclaimed her own narrative, first with her lauded congressional testimony, and now with this memoir.
A child of parents who survived Soviet and Nazi terror, Yovanovitch's life and work have taught her the preciousness of democracy as well as the dangers of corruption. Lessons from the Edge follows the arc of her career as she develops into the person we came to know during the impeachment proceedings.
"A brilliant, engaging, and inspiring memoir from one of America's wisest and most courageous diplomats—essential reading for current policymakers, aspiring public servants, and anyone who cares about America's role in the world."—Madeleine K. Albright
"At turns moving and gripping and always inspiring ... a powerful testament to a uniquely American life well-lived and a remarkable career of dedicated public service at the highest levels of government."—Fiona Hill, New York Times best-selling author of There Is Nothing for You Here: Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-First Century
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER | An inspiring and urgent memoir by the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine—a pioneering diplomat who spent her career advancing democracy in the post-Soviet world, and who electrified the nation by speaking truth to power during the first impeachment of President Trump.
By the time she became U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch had seen her share of corruption, instability, and tragedy in developing countries. But it came as a shock when, in early 2019, she was recalled from her post after a smear campaign by President Trump's personal attorney and his associates—men operating outside of normal governmental channels, and apparently motivated by personal gain. Her courageous participation in the subsequent impeachment inquiry earned Yovanovitch the nation's respect, and her dignified response to the president's attacks won our hearts. She has reclaimed her own narrative, first with her lauded congressional testimony, and now with this memoir.
A child of parents who survived Soviet and Nazi terror, Yovanovitch's life and work have taught her the preciousness of democracy as well as the dangers of corruption. Lessons from the Edge follows the arc of her career as she develops into the person we came to know during the impeachment proceedings.
"A brilliant, engaging, and inspiring memoir from one of America's wisest and most courageous diplomats—essential reading for current policymakers, aspiring public servants, and anyone who cares about America's role in the world."—Madeleine K. Albright
"At turns moving and gripping and always inspiring ... a powerful testament to a uniquely American life well-lived and a remarkable career of dedicated public service at the highest levels of government."—Fiona Hill, New York Times best-selling author of There Is Nothing for You Here: Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-First Century
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February 21, 2022
The former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, who got unwillingly caught up in Donald Trump’s first impeachment, examines corruption abroad and at home in this stinging memoir. Yovanovitch was removed from her ambassadorship in Kiev in 2019 amid fabricated accusations of collusion with Ukrainian figures to subvert the 2016 U.S. presidential election and claims that she “had spoken with ‘disdain’ about the Trump administration.” As she writes, the allegations arose from efforts by Trump’s lawyer Rudolph Giuliani and a Ukrainian prosecutor to tar candidate Joe Biden and his son Hunter with insinuations of corrupt dealings in Ukraine. Yovanovitch gives a gripping account of this Kafkaesque scandal, complete with Trump’s drive-by tweets—“Everywhere Marie Yovanovitch went turned bad”—and her moving testimony at congressional impeachment hearings. She sets it within an engrossing recap of her diplomatic career in postings to Somalia and ex-Soviet nations, during which she was subjected to sexist indignities (while ambassador to Kyrgyzstan, she was asked by a press attaché to serve cookies to a reporter) and enmeshed in wrangles to promote reforms aimed at bolstering human rights and reducing rampant corruption in foreign governments (and, eventually, America’s). Full of shrewd insights and bitter ironies, Yovanovitch’s saga offers a revealing insider’s take on the labyrinth of foreign policy and on one of the most sordid episodes of Trump’s presidency. Photos. -
March 1, 2022
A veteran Foreign Service officer tells all. In this fine memoir, Yovanovitch (b. 1958) chronicles her career in the Foreign Service, where she has served in a variety of posts, with an emphasis on the Soviet and post-Soviet world. Her father left the Soviet Union as a child, and her mother survived World War II in Nazi Germany. As immigrants in Canada, they met and married in 1958, moved to the U.S. in 1962, and raised a family on the small salary of a boarding school teacher. As hardworking as her parents, Marie excelled in high school and, later, at Princeton. After graduation, a Russian-language program in Moscow cemented her fascination with world affairs, and she joined the Foreign Service in 1986. The author writes about the sexism she experienced in the service, noting how "pale, male, and Yale" was a popular profile of its employees. One of her first assignments was Somalia, an impoverished, corrupt, and often dangerous failed state, but she did well. Tours in Uzbekistan and Moscow in the 1990s and Ukraine in 2001 solidified her expertise on Russia and its former provinces after the Soviet Union's collapse, and she rose to the top of her profession as ambassador to Kyrgyzstan in 2005, Armenia in 2008, and Ukraine in 2016. The author delivers captivating accounts of her ambassadorial duties, which included furthering American interests, discouraging and fighting corruption, and promoting capitalism, good government, human rights, and the rule of law. Although successful on many issues, Yovanovitch does not deny that the three ex-Soviet provinces where she served remain corrupt and ill-governed. She was ambassador to Ukraine in 2019 when then-President Donald Trump and his allies began pressuring its government to gather dirt on his rival, Joe Biden. Apparently, Yovanovitch showed insufficient enthusiasm for the job; after a nasty smear campaign, she was fired. A compelling memoir of diplomatic service behind the old Iron Curtain.COPYRIGHT(2022) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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Starred review from March 1, 2022
After her magnetic congressional testimony during Donald Trump's first impeachment trial, Yovanovitch was hailed as a "rock star," a "badass." She felt anything but. As a career public servant posted to danger zones in lands ruled by corrupt regimes from Somalia to Kyrgyzstan, Yovanovitch's pragmatic mantra was "keep your head down." Wherever her diplomatic missions took her, Yovanovitch epitomized foreign service office philosophy, hewing to the principle of representing American ideals and policies with dignity and integrity. This worked well for her until Trump and his henchmen came along. In a far-reaching memoir that traces her family's migration from Russia to North America and her own trajectory from shy private school student to ambitious State Department careerist, Yovanovitch divulges in granular detail the situation on the ground in every country she served while illuminating the deft juggling act required when one is charged with bringing democracy to nations mired in totalitarianism or authoritarianism. Nowhere was that task more challenging than in her posting as ambassador to Ukraine during the Trump administration, which set her in the crosshairs of nefarious politicians both abroad and at home. A superbly crafted and intimately revealing self-portrait of a true hero of American diplomacy. Pair this with Fiona Hill's There Is Nothing for You Here (2021).COPYRIGHT(2022) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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Jennifer Szalai, New York Times
"Absorbing... During the [impeachment] hearings, Yovanovitch sounded calm and self-assured, but in her book she describes how scared she was.... That I arrived at this moment in the book with my heart in my throat speaks to how skillfully Yovanovitch narrates her life story." — Jennifer Szalai, New York Times
"Subtle and engaging ... Yovanovitch emerges from this narrative as a model of what America should want in its diplomats: courageous, steadfast, removed from politics to the point of naivete." — David Ignatius, The Washington Post
"Lessons From the Edge is a brilliant, engaging, and inspiring memoir from one of America's wisest and most courageous diplomats. More than just a vivid exposition of the events leading up to Donald Trump's first impeachment, Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch has written a timely and authoritative account of U.S. policy towards the former Soviet Union. This book is essential reading for current policymakers, aspiring diplomats, and anyone who cares about America's role in the world." — Madeleine K. Albright, former US Secretary of State
"A front row seat to the disinformation campaign that ultimately saw [Yovanovitch] removed from her last overseas post... [Lessons From the Edge] also provides insight into the post-Soviet Union politics of Russia and Ukraine... And it pays homage to Foreign Service Officers (FSOs) and the work they do, and a career that still remains a mystery to many Americans." — NPR.org
"We've never needed [Yovanovitch's] insights more than we do right now." — Ali Velshi, The Rachel Maddow Show
"A superbly crafted and intimately revealing self-portrait of a true hero of American diplomacy.... Wherever her diplomatic missions took her, Yovanovitch epitomized foreign service office philosophy, hewing to the principle of representing American ideals and policies with dignity and integrity." — Booklist (starred review)
"Yovanovitch's memoir is the right book at the right time as readers try to make sense of what's happening in Ukraine." — USA Today
"Ambassador Yovanovitch's dismissal from post in Kyiv marked a cruel end to the illustrious career of one of the most respected diplomats in the U.S. Foreign Service. It also helped spark a chain of events that led to Donald Trump's first impeachment. This memoir, at turns moving and gripping and always inspiring, is a powerful testament to a uniquely American life well-lived and a remarkable career of dedicated public service at the highest levels of government." — Fiona Hill, Senior Fellow, the Brookings Institution, and New York Times best-selling author of There Is Nothing for You Here: Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-First Century
"Timely and telling, as well as a fine story of a life in national service." — The Guardian
"Captivating... a compelling memoir of diplomatic service behind the old Iron Curtain." — Kirkus Reviews
"First through the breach, Ambassador Yovanovitch showed Americans what courage and patriotism looks like. More than essential reading, Lessons from the Edge is thoroughly engaging and impossible to put down, showing us how an introverted career diplomat overcame the most vicious of smear campaigns to become a foreign service legend." — Congressman Adam Schiff
"Written with the humility of a true public servant and a novelist's eye for detail, Ambassador Yovanovitch's memoir takes readers inside the fast-paced world of modern diplomacy and lays...
