The Ambassadors: From Ancient Greece to Renaissance Europe, the Men Who Introduced the World to Itself

There is much more to this book than the title suggests. While reviewing the triumphs and travails of the ambassador class from the ancients to the renaissance, the reader receives a superb review or solid primer on the great political and religious events of the time. In the days before near-instantaneous communications, the ambassador was more often than not the face of nations. Rulers were often solely reliant upon the ambassadorial depiction of foreign lands as their only means with which to plot their strategies beyond their borders. These depictions were often peppered with prejudices of social systems deemed inferior to that of the ambassador's home populace, but for better or worse, these narratives were often the defacto source of knowledge of outsiders for decades or longer. Mr. Wright's own narrative is a pleasure to read. I particularly liked the flow between chapters. My personal favorite sections included the discussions on the origin of diplomatic immunity; something we simply take for granted but it was interesting to discover how it came to be. The end of the book also contains a well-summarized discussion of the theory of diplomacy but the book is definitely at its best as a tour guide to the centuries long pursuit of man discovering man.