Summary

Thomas G. Weiss, Tatiana Carayannis, Louis Emmerij, and Richard Jolly, UN Voices: The Struggle for Development and Social Justice (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005), 520 pp.

UN Voices presents the human and moving life stories of an extraordinary group of individuals who contributed to the economic and social record of the UN’s life and activities. Drawing from extensive oral histories, the book presents in their own words the experiences of seventy-nine individuals from around the globe who have spent much of their professional lives engaged in United Nations affairs. Among those interviewed are such noted figures as Kofi Annan, Margaret Anstee, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Noeleen Heyzer, Conor Cruise O’Brien, Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, Amartya Sen, and Kurt Waldheim as well as many less well-known UN professional men and women who have made significant contributions to the international struggle for a better world. Their professional accounts bring to life the UN’s contributions in dealing with such events as decolonization, the rise and fall of the Berlin Wall, and September 11, 2001, and such issues as human rights, the environment, poverty, and gender.