Time & Date
Doors open at 5:30 p.m.
Event Location
WBUR CitySpace 890 Commonwealth Avenue Boston, MA 02215Open in Google Maps
Veteran journalist Glen Johnson covered John Kerry’s four-year term as Secretary of State, taking more than 100,000 photographs, from the Vatican to the Kremlin to No. 10 Downing Street.
Johnson will share stories (and photos!) from his new book, "Window Seat on the World: My Travels with the Secretary of State" with WBUR State House reporter Steve Brown.
About "Window Seat on the World"
Reporter Glen Johnson had been covering politics for the Boston Globe when he received a job offer that would embed him in this world of protocols, planes, and global peacekeeping. His new boss would be Secretary of State John Kerry, set to become the most prominent diplomat on the world stage.
Johnson sensed it was a meeting of man and moment.
For four years, he accompanied Kerry as he became the most-traveled secretary of State in history. The former journalist kept notes while Kerry worked out a power-sharing agreement in Afghanistan, negotiated with the Israelis, convinced Iran to get rid of its nuclear weapons program, developed a counter-ISIS coalition, and brokered climate change agreements, including the 2015 Paris Agreement.
Kerry also confronted two lingering challenges: how to cooperate with an assertive China and a Russia that sidestepped its own wrongdoing but felt aggrieved and justified to interfere in the 2016 presidential election.
In his goal to create the best and most complete photo archive of any secretary of State, Johnson lobbied the State Department for a decent camera and shot more than 100,000 photographs everywhere Kerry went—from the office of Pope Francis to center ice for a puck drop at Madison Square Garden, from the Kremlin and No. 10 Downing Street to a helicopter flying over Antarctica.
"Window Seat on the World" is an all-access look at life inside the nation’s first cabinet agency: the complexity of State Department protocols, the grueling schedules, the delicacy of engagement with world leaders and foreign cultures, and the dedication of a longtime public servant and his team to the practice of diplomacy.