Best Book to Be Skimmed This Week ” Weapons of Mass Diplomacy “

Weapons of Mass Diplomacy by ”Abel Lanzac” demonstrates indisputably that a graphic novel can provide great opportunities for trenchant commentary on public affairs.

Abel Lanzac, the pseudonym of the very real French diplomat “Antonin Baudry”, deftly skewers all sides in this hilarious and biting take on the events leading up to the Iraq War. No one, not the Americans nor the French nor the Middle Eastern.

The book was awarded the Best Graphic Novel at the “Angoulême International Comics Festival” of 2013.

It’s both a cultural touchstone and a fantastic reading experience. It makes you laugh, think, and it brings you into the whirlwind experience of international politics.

The last months of 2001 and the years immediately after were a tumultuous, confusing, and terrifying time. The rest of the world, equally abashed, watched as an angry and frightened superpower came to grips with it’s vulnerability and went on a rampage looking for the parties to blame.

” Weapons of Mass Diplomacy “

As part of an interconnected world, other countries tried to help the wounded warrior bend towards reason rather than revenge, and one such country was France. The attempt to bridge this gap between America and the rest of the world is chronicled in Weapons of Mass Diplomacy, a graphic novel.

A fictionalized account of the events in 2002 surrounding the lead up to America’s invasion and occupation of Iraq, the book introduces us to Arthur Vlaminck, who has landed his first job a speechwriter for French Foreign Minister Alexandre Taillard de Vorms.

Storming through the halls and slamming doors in the Quai d’Orsay, de Vorms is a powerful intellectual of bombast and vision, simultaneously an admirable diplomat and a callous taskmaster.

Writing from his own experiences within the “Quai d’Orsay”, brings us a story that is both a compelling international thriller on par with Thirteen Days and a very funny and true-to-life comedy of daily life reminiscent of Office Space.

Arthur could not be a more sympathetic protagonist smart but constantly under the gun, well-meaning but often railroaded by coworkers, and plunged immediately into a situation completely out of his depth and demanded to swim.