No playing at recess

U.S. Ambassador John Bolton takes his UN tenure by storm and by smile | Mindy Belz

Stuart Ramson for WORLD

To keep up with John Bolton, bring a tape recorder along—no, bring two. And a pencil for inserting periods at the end of his sentences, because when John Bolton speaks he grants no pause, barely a breath between utterances that range from Sudan to Japan to Iran to North Korea to China and back again.

Inside the battened-down U.S. mission to the UN, past the metal detectors and the one-way glass and the camera-ready UN security cordon and the personal security detail, is a whirr of activity with the controversial U.S. ambassador to the UN at its center.

The hum is particularly notable given that, when last seen, our protagonist was being hoisted off a marble floor on Capitol Hill, bruised and bloodied from a nasty Senate confirmation fight whose five months seemed like longer than forever (all figuratively speaking, of course; this is a democracy). In it the 57-year-old foreign policy expert, having held posts under four presidents, suddenly found himself accused of everything from throwing tape dispensers and shoes at subordinates to causing the shutdown of the largest military base in South Dakota (and that, from a Republican).