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A Man of Peace in a World of War
Wiley
December 2006
On Sale: December 22, 2006
Featuring: Kofi Annan
384 pages ISBN: 0471787442 EAN: 9780471787440 Hardcover
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Non-Fiction Biography
When Harvey Rice, president of Macalester College,
introduced a young African student to his new classmates in
1959, he urged the Americans to get to know this young man,
who was destined for a lifetime of great accomplishment and
would be a world leader some day. Despite the eerie accuracy
of Rice's prediction, however, Kofi Annan's path to destiny
was anything but direct. In Kofi Annan: A Man of Peace in a World of War, former Los
Angeles Times foreign and diplomatic correspondent Stanley
Meisler traces Annan's very unconventional rise from
optimistic student to striving personnel and budget
specialist in the United Nations bureaucracy to full-time
manager of the world's crises. Drawing on personal interviews with Annan, as well as
numerous friends, U.N. colleagues, diplomats, and world
leaders, Meisler examines Annan's entrance onto the world
stage from his emergence as an astute and disarmingly frank
negotiator during the lead-up to the first Gulf War. He also
reviews Annan's tenure as head of U.N. Peacekeeping, where
he supervised dozens of operations and launched a campaign
to make U.N. peacekeeping efforts more professional. Meisler presents a fascinating behind-the-scenes account of
Annan's "non-campaign" for United Nations secretary-general,
including the role of U.S. ambassador Madeleine Albright,
who vetoed the re-election of Secretary-General Boutros
Boutros-Ghali. Meisler's analysis of Annan's ten years in
office examines such major events as the U.N. interventions
in Kosovo and East Timor, W.M.D. inspections in Iraq, and
Annan's failed attempts to forestall the U.S. invasion of
Iraq. This unauthorized biography also delves into the
events that threatened to destroy Annan's credibility and
devalue his many accomplishments—the involvement of his son,
Kojo, in the Iraq oil for food scandal. Rarely does a prominent world figure cooperate with a
biographer who offers no say over the book's contents, no
prepublication examination of the manuscript, and no
guarantee that the final product will present its subject in
a positive light. Kofi Annan presents a unique portrait of
this widely admired leader—with his own view of events
tempered and augmented by those of his allies and opponents,
defenders and detractors. It is a must-read for anyone
interested in diplomacy, international affairs, war and
peace, and the daunting task of saving the world from the
ravages of war.
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