A fascinating behind-the scenes look at the United Nations in operation and at the life of a high-level diplomat. The author, a former UN staff member, focuses on his own career to show how the UN constantly juggles its language and its decisions to demonstrate its impartiality in important affairs. Picco was constantly on the frontlines: he was involved in the UN’s efforts to end the Afghanistan war, mediate the Iran-Iraq war, and resolve the Lebanese hostage situation. He offers revelatory insights into these major stories, writing with a crisp turn of phrase that makes even the most tedious of diplomatic memoranda seem exciting. When the action heats up, the book becomes difficult to even put down (a rarity among tomes of diplomatic history). Among the most riveting sections are those describing Picco’s negotiations with the captors of Terry Anderson and the other Lebanese hostages and his audience with Saddam Hussein to help negotiate peace in Iraq’s war with Iran. Underpinning the events-driven narrative is a more thematic tale: the story of how the UN discovered a new activist role for itself in the post—Cold War world. Picco clearly believes that the UN’s men and women have become the true architects of a new world order. His memoir manages to elevate itself to the first tier of current affairs books and offers fresh insight on many of the most memorable events in recent international affairs. A must-read for anyone who wants to know what the UN really does. (8 pages b&w photos, not seen)
Pub Date: May 17, 1999
ISBN: 0-8129-2910-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Times/Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1999
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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