History Shock : University Press of Kansas : 9780700632022 : 0700632026 : 30 Apr 2021 : For over twenty-five years John Dickson served the United States as a Foreign Service officer in North America, South America, the Caribbean, and Africa. In History Shock: When History Collides with Foreign Relations Dickson offers valuable insights into the daily life of a Foreign Service officer and the work of representing the United States. Dickson organizes History Shock around a country-by-country series of lively personal experience vignettes followed by compelling historical analysis of the ways in which his inadequate understanding of the host country's history, particularly its prior history with the United States, combined with his lack of knowledge of his own nation's history lead to history shock: where dramatically different interpretations of history blocked diplomatic understanding and cooperation. John Dickson offers these "stories with a history" to highlight the interaction betwe