Peacemaker: U Thant, the United Nations and the Untold Story of the 1960s

(Paperback, Export/Airside)

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'Essential reading for anyone interested in the origins and possibilities of our current global crisis' Rory Stewart, author of Politics on the Edge
'Thant Myint-U is the greatest living historian of Burma' William Dalrymple

In December 1971, after having stepped down as the United Nations' longest-serving Secretary-General, U Thant was ranked the sixth 'most admired man' in America, so why he is largely forgotten today

In Peacemaker, Thant Myint-U traces his grandfather's rise from schoolteacher in a small Burmese backwater in 1947 to celebrity at the centre of global of politics just two decades later. He reveals U Thant's integral yet forgotten roles in some of the twentieth centuries' most critical crises - from battling white supremacist mercenaries in the Congo and mediating a peaceful end to the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 to ensuring the ceasefire held after the 1967 Six-Day War - and details the shifting world order that U Thant affected.

Despite U Thant's popularity as a peacemaker, his unrelenting efforts to end the fighting in Vietnam - on terms very different from those desired by Lyndon Johnson's White House - made him an enemy of many in the American national security establishment, sowing the seeds of his downfall.

At once rigorous and hugely entertaining, Peacemaker is an intimate biography that not only attests to the power of hope, peace and individual actions in times of uncertainty, but also chronicles a golden age of diplomacy: a time when people believed that it was only by coming together that we could tackle the biggest threats posing humanity.

Reviews

A wonderful subject, beautifully written, evoking a world startlingly like and unlike our own - a reminder of paths tragically not taken, of idealism and cynicism - of how much the United Nations offered and could still offer. Essential reading for anyone interested in the origins and possibilities of our current global crisis. * Rory Stewart, bestselling author of Politics On the Edge *
Amazing. This book will come as a revelation even to scholars of the UN in the Cold War period. * Frances Fitzgerald, author of Fire in the Lake *
This isn't just a beautiful, gripping, and indispensable biography of the longest-serving United Nations secretary-general. By reconstructing his grandfather's reckoning with the upheavals of the 1960s, Thant Myint-U also rehabilitates almost forgotten aspirations for a postcolonial world beyond endless war and enduring hierarchy. These dreams revisited in this eye-opening and uplifting book have an enormous claim on the attention of Americans at a crossroads in their relation to global affairs. * Samuel Moyn, Kent Professor of Law and History at Yale University and author of Liberalism Against Itself *
Thant Myint-U is the greatest living historian of Burma * William Dalrymple *
A gift: a primer on the Cold War era that revives the pivotal role of U Thant - the first non-European to lead the UN - foreshadowing the conflicts we face today. * Elizabeth Becker, author of You Don't Belong Here: How Three Women Rewrote the Story of War *
U Thant devoted his life to the pursuit of peace in a fearsomely fractured world. With empathy, care, and scholarly rigor, Thant Myint-U reminds us that the truly courageous never abandoned their struggles for justice, even in the darkest of times. * Kevin Boyle, author of The Shattering: America in the 1960 *
A sobering account, told elegantly and eruditely * Financial Times on The Hidden History of Burma *

Author Bio

Thant Myint-U is an award-winning writer, historian and conservationist. He served for over a decade with the United Nations, including in peacekeeping operations in Cambodia and the Balkans and was an advisor to the Burmese government during the early years of the transition from military dictatorship. He lives in Rangoon, where he currently heads U Thant House and the Yangon Heritage Trust.