front cover of Letters from Spain
Letters from Spain
A Seventeenth-Century French Noblewoman at the Spanish Royal Court
Marie Gigault de Bellefonds
Iter Press, 2021
Marie Gigault de Bellefonds, Marquise de Villars was a well-regarded figure in Parisian salons and esteemed by King Louis XIV, and she traveled internationally to accompany her ambassador husband, playing significant diplomatic roles at the court of Savoy in Turin and at the court of Spain in Madrid. She became the confidante of the queen of Spain, Marie-Louise d’Orléans, the niece of Louis XIV, and, as instructed by the king of France, endeavored to pursue French political interests in Madrid with female members of royalty.

This volume includes her surviving letters from Madrid to her friend Madame de Coulanges and an appendix of her letters sent from Paris and Turin. The letters from Spain, written between 1679 and 1681, paint a vivid and engaging picture of the royal court and its new queen.
 
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front cover of Maria Longworth Storer
Maria Longworth Storer
From Music and Art to Popes and Presidents
Constance J. Moore and Nancy M. Broermann
University of Cincinnati Press, 2019
While the adage may go, “Behind every great man is a great woman,” the story of Maria Longworth Storer necessitates a new adage—at the front of every great city is a great woman. After being shunted into the biographies and history books of other people, Longworth Storer is now finally given center stage on the one hundred and seventieth anniversary of her birth.

Maria Longworth Storer: From Music and Art to Popes and Presidents is the most comprehensive biography of this one of a kind Cincinnatian. Known as the founder of the first female-run manufacturing company in the United States, Rookwood Pottery, Longworth Storer was passionate about women’s rights, her city, and issues of poverty and the arts. She owned Rookwood pottery for nine years, and then transferred ownership after earning recognition at the Exhibition of American Art Industry in Philadelphia and receiving a gold medal at the Exposition Universelle in Paris. Aside from her success with Rookwood, Longworth Storer was central to making the Queen City the major cultural landmark it is today. Although the rest of her life was no less remarkable as the wife of notorious diplomat Bellamy Storer, later embroiled in the famous Roosevelt-Storer scandal, little has been written about her contributions and exploits in diplomatic relations and her powerful influence on turn-of-the-twentieth-century political leaders.  

Featuring new archival research, and never before seen photos of the Storer family, authors Constance J. Moore and Nancy M. Broermann have compiled a portrait of Maria Longworth Storer that is rich in detail, fitting to both the wide, often eclectic, breadth of Longworth Storer’s projects, and to the depth of her impact on leaders from Washington D.C. to Europe.

Moving through major moments in both American and Cincinnati history, and intersecting with significant historical figures including Teddy Roosevelt and William Howard Taft, Moore and Broermann expose the broader historical narrative of Longworth Storer’s life without letting her unique spirit and individual accomplishments become overshadowed by them.

Through thoughtful, balanced narrative, readers get to know a remarkable woman whose fascinating and dramatic life as a political figure, women’s rights advocate, and patron of the arts has had a long lasting legacy on the Queen City and the Shaping of our nation’s diplomatic policies.
 
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front cover of Paying Calls in Shangri-La
Paying Calls in Shangri-La
Scenes from a Woman’s Life in American Diplomacy
Judith M. Heimann
Ohio University Press, 2016

Judith M. Heimann entered the diplomatic life in 1958 to join her husband, John, in Jakarta, Indonesia, at his American Embassy post. This, her first time out of the United States, would set her on a path across the continents as she mastered the fine points of diplomatic culture. She did so first as a spouse, then as a diplomat herself, thus becoming part of one of the Foreign Service’s first tandem couples.

Heimann’s lively recollections of her life in Africa, Asia, and Europe show us that when it comes to reconciling our government’s requirements with the other government’s wants, shuttle diplomacy, Skype, and email cannot match on-the-ground interaction. The ability to gauge and finesse gesture, tone of voice, and unspoken assumptions became her stock-in-trade as she navigated, time and again, remarkably delicate situations.

This insightful and witty memoir gives us a behind-the-scenes look at a rarely explored experience: that of one of the very first married female diplomats, who played an unsung but significant role in some of the important international events of the past fifty years. To those who know something of today’s world of diplomacy, Paying Calls in Shangri-La will be an enlightening tour through the way it used to be—and for aspiring Foreign Service officers and students, it will be an inspiration.

Published in association with ADST-DACOR Diplomats and Diplomacy Series

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