The concept behind this book was intriguing to me. Found in the cookbook section of the bookstore, [Join Us at the Embassy] billed itself as “an insider’s view of how foreign ambassadors and embassies in Washington entertain and showcase their countries’ food, wine and culture.” If that’s all the author did, this would have been a great book. The problem is: the author attempts to encompass all of the history, culture, and holidays for each of the countries before dedicating a mere page or two to the actual embassy. Can the cultural history of Hungary be summarized in 3 pages? I’d say no, but the author does it. Can the Festivals and Holidays of France be summed up in only 1 page? Well, the answer needs to be yes (since she did it), but the result isn’t done very well. In barely 200 pages, Whitford crams in this data from 10 different countries. The consequence is a text which proves somewhat overwhelming in its magnitude and shockingly shallow in its content – and the “Ambassador” sections (the self proclaimed “point” of the book) rarely extended beyond a few pages.

Had this book been broken into a series of small volumes, each dedicated to a country or region, the author would have had the room to outline some of the more important aspects of the countries’ pasts, cuisine, culture, etc., and the end result could have been a growing reference collection providing true insight to the reader. Instead, this is what we have. Not bad, but not what I had expected and not what it could have been. ( )