United Nations: The First Fifty Years - Softcover

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

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.