This oral history interview, conducted by Charles Stuart Kennedy, covers Marshall Adairs family background and his lifetime experience with the U.S. Foreign Service, in which his father served from 1937 to1972 and he served from 1972 to 2007. It describes his own entry into the service, his overseas postings, and his work in the Bureaus of Economic Affairs and European Affairs. Among other things, Adair was involved with international commodity negotiations (1970s), with China and Burma (1980s), with Greece, Turkey, and Cyprus, ending the war in the Balkans, and strengthening democracy and national independence in Eastern Europe (1990s), and with NATO peacekeeping forces in Bosnia and the Special Operations War on Terror (2000s).