'A wonderful subject beautifully written evoking a world startlingly like and unlike our own'
Rory Stewart 'A brilliant portrait not just of a great and unjustly forgotten man but of an
entire age' William Dalrymple 'Important reading at any time in history essential in the
world of today' Peter Frankopan 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 is he 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. 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.
