RICHARD SACKS is author of the action/adventure novel and political thriller DRINKING FROM THE STREAM. An accomplished US diplomat with decades overseas, Mr. Sacks holds Masters Degrees in International Relations and International Economics from The Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) and in National Security Strategy from National War College. He also co-authored the award-winning PARAGUAY: THE PERSONALIST LEGACY.  He began his writing career reporting for The Middlesex News in Framingham, Massachusetts and The Associated Press in Detroit, Michigan.

DRINKING FROM THE STREAM, his first novel, is a work of imagination based on historical facts and fueled by lived experience. It is set in newly independent Africa during a time of wrenching upheaval. Think ON THE ROAD meets Idi Amin. 

Writing DRINKING FROM THE STREAM  was a multi-year challenge. After pouring out a quarter of the novel in a few weeks one summer on a Smith Corona portable typewriter Mr. Sacks then flung the unfinished manuscript in a box and shlepped it around the world through umpteen Foreign Service assignments. With his diplomatic postings drawing to a close, this intrepid traveler dusted off the old text and again set to work. STREAM appeared on March 11, 2025 on Koehler Books. 

To call Mr. Sacks a world traveler extraordinaire would be to slightly underrate his exploits. 

At the age of 23 Mr. Sacks bought a dugout canoe with a friend and paddled 200 miles down the legendary, treacherous Congo River to the Kisangani rapids. Maybe that wasn’t such a big deal. After all, he hitchhiked across Africa and the Sahara, crisscrossing the continent three times and lived to tell about it. And yes, he was in the stands for the “Rumble in the Jungle,” the Muhammed Ali – George Foreman heavyweight boxing championship fight in Kinshasa, (then) Zaire. 

That was on his way to working or traveling in 79 countries, twenty-two of them in Africa, while teaching himself to read, write, and speak French and Swahili and wearing a bunch of hats: school teacher, mountain climber,* French-Swahili interpreter, construction boss, transcontinental power-line surveyor, small businessman and entrepreneur, newspaper/wire service reporter, foreign correspondent, bike racer, author, diplomat. 

Author. And diplomat. Those are big hats.

How did this young man, a product of the Newton (Massachusetts) public schools, find himself some twenty years out of Africa as a Foreign Service Officer assigned to the team that opened the US Embassy in Hanoi, the first US Embassy in Vietnam since the Vietnam War? Well, it seemed like a good fit!

After finishing graduate school Mr. Sacks and Professor Riordan Roett published PARAGUAY: THE PERSONALIST LEGACY  (Westview 1991; Routledge 2019); CHOICE MAGAZINE named it “Outstanding Academic Book” in 1992.

Mr. Sacks was in Paraguay in 1989 when Alfredo Stroessner, Paraguay’s dictator for 35 years, was overthrown; he reported on Stroessner’s overthrow from Asunción for THE MIAMI HERALD. 

At that time Mr. Sacks held the unofficial record for passing the Foreign Service Exam, qualifying three times in three tries (no mean feat) to remain on State Dept. eligibility lists while completing graduate education. As a US diplomat he served in Mexico, Morocco, Vietnam, South Korea, Panama, and Pakistan, fluent in Vietnamese, French, Spanish, and German.

While Foreign Service veterans would hardly describe that life as “stable and predictable,” Mr. Sacks’s years of Department service were a bit more stable and predictable than his earlier years. 

When Mr. Sacks is not traveling, he lives in Washington, D.C. with his amazing wife, Aida. The three children are grown and off on their own adventures.

*In case you were wondering: Kilimanjaro (Tanzania); Popocatépetel, Malinche, and Paricutín (Mexico); many White Mountain peaks including Mt. Washington (New Hampshire); and six Colorado fourteeners (including Mt. Elbert, Longs Peak, Blanca Peak, and Uncompahgre Peak). To name just a few.