Mission to Oslo: Dancing with the Queen, Dealmaking with the Russians, Shaping History

NATO was expanding, Germany was reuniting, Norway was hosting both the Oslo Accords and the Winter Olympics, and former Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Tom Loftus was wining, dining, and most importantly, negotiating his way through it all as President Bill Clinton’s ambassador to the Kingdom of Norway.

Told with wit and wry humor, the grandson of Norwegian immigrants and the one-time Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate vibrantly brings his international job to life. His memoir covers 1993 through 1997, the momentous four years of the first Clinton administration—a critical time of historic change after the end of the Cold War, with policies adopted that are still debated today, including the Norwegian-brokered Oslo Accords that laid the hopeful groundwork for a path to peace in the Mideast.

Loftus recounts the Oslo Accords and relates the hugely pivotal work of both building of relations with a fledgling Russian democracy and of taking part in the expansion of NATO to Eastern Europe and the Baltics. He details everything from his travels with The King and Queen to his artful dodging of tanks on a wintry Russian road and from hosting First Lady Hillary Clinton at the Winter Olympics to sharing tea with Nelson Mandela.

Dignitaries and diplomats. Food, wine, entertaining … and, yes, skiing. It is all here in what former U.S. News and World Report journalist Peter Ross Range calls “a wonderfully engaging memoir … a rollicking good journey and compelling tale of a fascinating career.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Tom Loftus served as U.S. ambassador to the Kingdom of Norway from 1993 through 1997. A member of the Wisconsin Legislature from 1977 to 1991, he was the longest-serving Democratic Speaker of the Assembly, from 1983 to 1991. In 1990, he was the Democratic candidate for Wisconsin governor. Tom was special advisor to the director general of the World Health Organization from 1998 to 2005. He was a member of the University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents from 2005 to 2011, and in 2020 and 2021 was senior policy advisor to the UW System president. Tom is on the board of the Outrider Foundation. A U.S. Army veteran, he is a UW-Whitewater graduate and earned a master’s degree from UW-Madison’s La Follette School of Public Affairs.