United Nations: The First Fifty Years - Hardcover

Meisler, Stanley

3.79

106 ratings by Goodreads

9780871136169: United Nations: The First Fifty Years

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0871136163 ISBN 13: 9780871136169

Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Pr, 1995

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Published coincidentally with the United Nations' fiftieth anniversary, a provocative, accessible survey of the evolution of the institution explores both the U.N.'s achievements and its failures in the new era of peace enforcement.

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From the Back Cover:

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.

From Publishers Weekly:

This lucid, popular version of the first 50 years of UN history by former Los Angeles Times foreign correspondent Meisler is organized around the various crises the UN has faced since its inception?Israeli independence, Korea, Suez, the Congo, Cuban missiles, Vietnam, the Six-Day War, the Gulf war?and also includes chapters on the various secretaries-general. Meisler doesn't pull any punches in assessing the policies and personalities of the world organization, excoriating former secretary-general Kurt Waldheim for concealing his past ("it seems like a fortuitous metaphor for the United Nations to be led during the 1970s by a Nazi and a liar"). Yet he is fair-minded in his presentation, opining that "Though cautious, [Waldheim] was an adequate and active secretary general." This up-to-date account concludes with chapters detailing the UN's travails in the quagmires of Somalia and the former Yugoslavia. A handy primer for those who want to know the score but haven't taken the time to unravel the byzantine workings of the world organization.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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