A foreign service officer from the early 1960s until his retirement over twenty years later, Newlin served in Paris, Guatemala, Brussels, and finally as Consul General in Nice, with an assignment at the State Department in Washington between each overseas posting. His memoir, however, is less a look back at the diplomatic life than it is a revelatory account of the life of a high-functioning alcoholic. Newlin grew up in high-society Philadelphia and soon adopted the habit of regular cocktail hours. He drank at boarding school, at Harvard, and throughout his career. As he reports the various subterfuges he devised to conceal the extent of his drinking, he gives an illuminating picture of alcohol’s role in the culture of white male privilege in the 1950s and ‘60’s.