United Nations: a history

The beginnings : from Dumbarton Oaks to San Francisco

Trygve lie and Iran : off to a bad start

Ralph Bunche and the infant state of Israel

The Korean War : no more Manchurias

Dag Hammarskjold

Suez : the empires strike out

The battles of Katanga and the crash of Hammarskjold

Adlai Stevenson and the Cuban Missile Crisis : the U.N. as theater

U Thant and the quest for peace in Vietnam

The Six-Day War

Kurt Waldheim : the big lie

Zionism Is racism

UNESCO : defenses of peace in the minds of men

Javier Perez de Cuellar and the end of the Cold War

The Persian Gulf War

Boutros Boutros-Ghali

The Somalia debacle

Alibi : the U.N. in Bosnia

Horrors in Rwanda

Kofi Annan : the acidental Secretary-General

America defies the U.N and invades Iraq

Ban Ki-moon, the slippery eel

Epilogue: The Arab Spring

A UN chronology

Appendix: U.N. peacekeeping missions.