Save Your Ammo

“He believed that eating my heart would transfer my abilities to him. I knew that once we started shooting, it would be a foregone conclusion.”

When you work in foreign environments it can seem like the principles for getting things done are blown out of the water. How do you accomplish your mission? And get home safe?

Save Your Ammo is a practical guide to working with people from other cultures. This plain-language resource shows:

• How to turn uncertain, potentially dangerous intercultural situations around using tact and clever decision making.


• How to get past cultural complexity to spot real problems and find creative, win-win solutions.


• How to trade the legacy of ‘the ugly American’ for trusting relationships that let you realize goals you otherwise couldn’t have.

Cognitive psychologists Rasmussen and Sieck have distilled the advice in this book from interviews with more than 200 national security personnel. Seasoned professionals who have spent their careers interacting with foreign populations and partners all over the world.

Confront strange requests for assistance in Kyrgyzstan. Failures to follow protocol in Korea. A fight between Russians and Turks 5000 feet in the air over the Black Sea. An armed Liberian child soldier who wants to rip out your heart.

Could you see through the cultural fog and achieve success without firing a single shot?