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United Nations: 1st edition The First Fifty Years by Stanley Meisler ISBN: 0-87113-656-2 / ISBN-13: 978-0-87113-656-5 US $16.00 - 6 x 9, 416 pp - Mar. 1997 |
Beginning with the birth of the U.N., when Roosevelt, Stalin, Truman, and Gromyko set the stage, United Nations brings us a cast of profoundly important and colorful international players: the brilliant Dag Hammarskjold, who became the most daring, imaginative secretary-general the U.N. ever had; Nikita Khrushchev, who electrified the General Assembly as he pounded his shoe in protest over the Congo; Ralph Bunche, the grandson of a slave and “the Jackie Robinson of American diplomacy,” who won the Nobel Peace Prize for his U.N. work in the Middle East; and U.S. ambassador Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who walked out of the General Assembly over the Third World’s anti-Zion resolution. United Nations is a story filled with action and heartbreak.
With the end of the Cold War, the U.N. believed it could fulfill the vision of its founders, but disillusionment soon set in, and its future now hangs in the balance. Meisler lauds many of the U.N.’s achievements, but questions its future. His portrait is cautious, optimistic, and powerfully informed.