Vera and Donald Blinken, Vera and the Ambassador

Vera and the Ambassador

Vera and Donald Blinken

SUNY, Feb 2009, $24.95

ISBN: 9781438426631

President Clinton appointed financial banker Donald Blinken as the American ambassador to, Hungary. Mr. Clinton selected Mr. Blinken because the President understood the fledgling democracy would need someone who could help the country adjust to the global economy and Donald's wife Vera was born and raised in Budapest; as a child she and her mom fled just after WWII ended and the Soviets brought down the Iron Curtain.

This memoir provides alternating insider looks at Hungary during a critical adjustment point. Rotating perspectives, Donald's sections enable the reader to obtain a glimpse at world events impacting the former Communist nation such as joining NATO and helping with the Bosnia crisis. Vera's entries are more personal as she compares the 1990s Budapest to her memoirs of living there in the 1940s. VERA AND THE AMBASSADOR is one of the best autobiographies in recent years, as readers will appreciate the couples' take on the 1990s in East Europe with Hungary as their prime focus as well as the historical viewpoint of how much the capital changed in four plus decades of Soviet rule.