United Nations: The First Fifty Years

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0871136562 ISBN 13: 9780871136565

Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1997

In a lucid, colorful account, Stanley Meisler brings alive the personalities and events of the first fifty years of the United Nations. It is a story filled with action and heartbreak. "Stanley Meisler tells the story of the United Nations, its promise and its problems, with clarity and authority. He brings to life the history of the world organization and a half-century of America's hopes for and frustration with world government . . . . You will learn why China is almost by chance one of five permanent members on the Security Council, how the Council's veto power was adopted at Stalin's demand, why Adlai Stevenson left his post as U.S. ambassador in lonely despair, how Kurt Waldheim hid his past to become Secretary General, how the Bush administration maneuvered the United Nations into supporting Operation Desert Storm, and much, much more. This is the definitive account of the United Nations for a general audience, told by a master." -- Jim Hoagland, chief foreign correspondent, The Washington Post

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.