Bureaucratic Entrepreneur

Richard N. Haass is president of the Council on Foreign Relations. Until June 2003 he was director of policy planning for the Department of State, where he was a principal adviser to Secretary of State Colin Powell on a broad range of foreign policy concerns. Previously, Haass was vice president and director of Foreign Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution, Washington, D.C., USA. He was also special assistant to President George H. W. Bush and senior director for Near East and South Asian affairs on the staff of the National Security Council, 1989-93. He is the author or editor of ten books in American foreign policy, including The Opportunity: America's Moment to Alter History's Course/em>.

"A primer... for pols and business managers working toward their spin doctorate." —William Safire, The New York Times, The New York Times|"Government appointees and workers in nonprofit institutions can learn much from this authoritative, pithy guide." — Publishers Weekly|"Using the compass as an operating metaphor- north of you is the boss, south of you are your staff, east of you are those with whom you work, and west of you are those with whom you should work- the author shows how to set goals and translate them into results." — International Review of Administrative Sciences, 1/1/2001|"An intelligent, comprehensive, dispassionate and eminently fair analysis of Franco-American divergences over the future of world politics, the role of NATO, and the handling of economic conflicts of interests. The proposals for improving relations even though differences will remain (and the development of the European Union will complicate matters) are modest and sensible." —Stanley Hoffmann, Buttenwieser University Professor, Harvard University|"French-US relations are too frequently framed by ostentation. Parmentier and Brenner argue convincingly in this volume in favor of national policies based upon greater attention to the other partner's positions. As demonstrated in their common experience in Bosnia post-1994, this would make it possible for mutual awareness of the two countries' shared interests to replace their tiresome, obsolete and unhelpful diplomatic joustling." —Alain Juppé, French foreign minister (1993-95) and prime minister (1995-1997)|"This is at once an extraordinarily thoughtful (and readable) examination of personal success and failure in the public sector and a practical 'how to' guide of the first order. I enjoyed it and was inspired by it. And, incidentally, it holds word for word for private-sector professionals as well." —Tom Peters, coauthor of In Search of Excellence; and author of Liberation Management and Thriving on Chaos