A Life Well Spent: Four Decades in the Indian Foreign Service transports the reader on a journey through the author’s career tracing his progression from an IFS probationer to Deputy National Security Advisor. In the process, it provides valuable insights into the highly variegated, exciting, and challenging work of an IFS officer. These insights are vividly brought to life as the author has not shied away from sharing the exchanges he had with many notables, such as Nawaz Sharif, A.B. Vajpayee, Narasimha Rao and Pervez Musharraf.