It is an easy to read book for everyone . Full of pictures , colorful graphs and nice ideas from children on environmental issues.It is a childrens version of Agenda 21 written and singed by 183 governments of the world during Rio Summit at 1992.

An excellent book which the focuses mainly on the US - UN relationship. In fact the author exposes some of the main issues related to UN reform and how political the workings are for a Secretary General to implement reforms; even the reforms adopted by the security council.

In addition the book demonstrates how critical and powerful a role US plays in the working of the UN (even without having payed the UN dues at the time). To quote Jamie Rubin "The UN can only do what the US Lets it do".

However I was a little dissapointed that the author did not bring out how the UN works in terms of how the resolutions are proposed, voted, adopted and implemented. Also all the focus is on the US-UN relationship and all other member relations are viewed through this prism. Also I felt the author was preoccupied with explaining the reader how he was deprived of the second term in the office.

The author has singled out Madeline Albright for some special treatment in the book. This personality of Madeline Albright is very different from what the US media has portrayed her. She comes across as very insecure and cunning (For example: what Joseph Verner Reed says he heard her say " I will make Boutros think I am his friend; then I will break his legs").

Another thing I want to mention here is in relation to what US keeps saying about how ineffectual the UN is in regards to imposing restrictions on Iraq. But what I realize from the book is that we often forget that US, its allies and its enemies are all part of the UN and the UN can only be as effective as its member states want it to be!

I've often thought or returned to passages in Boutros Boutros-Ghali's Unvanquished since reading it in the early summer of 1999. Throughout the debate and defeat of the CTBT, the charades over Congressional withholding of funding to the UN, Jesse Helms' appalling performance before Security Council Members in January of 2000, my attending the Millennium Forum as an accredited participant at the UN in May 2000, watching and hoping the requisite will might be found at the Millennium Summit in September 2000, I have repeatedly found myself recalling Boutros-Ghali's devastating critique of US undermining of the United Nations, struggled to fight off a pervasive sense of tragedy and lost opportunity, lost since 1992 when Boutros-Ghali's Agenda for Peace was shunted aside.

How many echos I've heard from the couple of hundred books I've read on the League of Nations and United Nations. How frightening it has been to watch my fellow citizens so obsessed with their own little private, selfish worlds, turning away from international responsibilities and duties, scape-goating the UN for our own failures and loss of nerve. During the last year, I've interviewed on over 230 radio stations about my own book, Into the Ruins, on the UN, in my own terms, and have heard firsthand all the extremist arguments against the participation of my country in the Organization, attempting to refute them as best I can.

There are many who understand the seriousness of the situation. William H. Luers, the President of the UNA-USA, writes a comprehensive appeal for UN support in his "Choosing Engagement: Uniting the U.N. with U.S. Interests" in the September/October 2000 issue of Foreign Affairs. The UNA, World Federalist Association, and others have done much to educate and elevate discussion about the necessity of our global cooperation through the United Nations. Alas, I often doubt, in the end, such efforts will save the day. Boutros Boutros-Ghali's Unvanquished reveals why. Having read all the writings and memoirs of the UN Secretary Generals, I believe Unvanquished stands alone as the most insightful, courageous, heroic work ever written about the realities of the United Nations and its Member States, especially the US.

Having failed the League of Nations and themselves, the global community rose from the ashes of World War II to form a more perfect union. As the Millennium Summit has recently demonstrated on paper, while most of the US media ignored it, the Member States understand precisely what needs to be done. Events already suggest they, we, still lack the will and shall quite likely have to suffer further the dread forces of history in order to find it.

How odd that such an incredibly important book, by one of the central international figures of the last decade, should be allowed to go out of print so soon after its publication. A sad commentary in itself.

I've often thought or returned to passages in Boutros Boutros-Ghali's Unvanquished since reading it in the early summer of 1999. Throughout the debate and defeat of the CTBT, the charades over Congressional withholding of funding to the UN, Jesse Helms' appalling performance before Security Council Members in January of 2000, my attending the Millennium Forum as an accredited participant at the UN in May 2000, watching and hoping the requisite will might be found at the Millennium Summit in September 2000, I have repeatedly found myself recalling Boutros-Ghali's devastating critique of US undermining of the United Nations, struggled to fight off a pervasive sense of tragedy and lost opportunity, lost since 1992 when Boutros-Ghali's Agenda for Peace was shunted aside.

How many echos I've heard from the couple of hundred books I've read on the League of Nations and United Nations. How frightening it has been to watch my fellow citizens so obsessed with their own little private, selfish worlds, turning away from international responsibilities and duties, scape-goating the UN for our own failures and loss of nerve. During the last year, I've interviewed on over 230 radio stations about my own book, Into the Ruins, on the UN, in my own terms, and have heard firsthand all the extremist arguments against the participation of my country in the Organization, attempting to refute them as best I can.

There are many who understand the seriousness of the situation. William H. Luers, the President of the UNA-USA, writes a comprehensive appeal for UN support in his "Choosing Engagement: Uniting the U.N. with U.S. Interests" in the September/October 2000 issue of Foreign Affairs. The UNA, World Federalist Association, and others have done much to educate and elevate discussion about the necessity of our global cooperation through the United Nations. Alas, I often doubt, in the end, such efforts will save the day. Boutros Boutros-Ghali's Unvanquished reveals why. Having read all the writings and memoirs of the UN Secretary Generals, I believe Unvanquished stands alone as the most insightful, courageous, heroic work ever written about the realities of the United Nations and its Member States, especially the US.

Having failed the League of Nations and themselves, the global community rose from the ashes of World War II to form a more perfect union. As the Millennium Summit has recently demonstrated on paper, while most of the US media ignored it, the Member States understand precisely what needs to be done. Events already suggest they, we, still lack the will and shall quite likely have to suffer the dread forces of history in order to find it.

How odd that such an incredibly important book, by one of the central international figures of the last decade, should be allowed to remain out of print so soon after its publication. A sad commentary in itself.

Boutros-Ghali chronicles his four years' of experiences working for Anwar as-Sadat, starting with the moment of his being appointed as minister of state for foreign affairs in 1977 and ending with the president's assassination in 1981. Although the author was hardly a novice at diplomacy at the start of his account (having already served as a high official of the Arab Socialist Party), joining the government made him a front-row participant at such epochal events as the Sadat trip to Jerusalem, the Camp David negotiations, and the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty.

True to his promise, Boutros-Ghali presents the memoirs he kept at the time raw, unimproved by later information, and they convey a candid sense of his errors and triumphs, his inconsistencies, digressions, and insights. The memoirs somewhat paradoxically reveal a aristocrat, very conscious of rank and appearance, who has an abiding concern for Africa; and a politician threatened with violence by the Palestinians who nonetheless insists on dealing with their concerns. But probably most interesting is how Boutros-Ghali came to appreciate Sadat's efforts. Consumed with non-aligned and African conferences, the author started out slightly horrified by Sadat's concessions to Israel. With time, however, he appreciated Sadat's extraordinary vision. His epiphany came in April 1979, a few days after the signing of the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty, when he realized that "Egypt had sacrificed enough lives and money for the Arabs and the Palestinians. The time has come for Egypt to think of itself." By September 1979, he was "fully convinced by Sadat's argument" that getting back the Sinai mattered more than suffering isolation at political conferences. So public an acknowledgment of one's own failings is rare, and all the more creditable coming from as distinguished a personage as the former secretary-general of the United Nations.

Middle East Quarterly, Sept 1997

This weighty tome comprises a 100-page overview, a detailed chronology and the texts of about 180 source documents including UN Resolutions, the Arusha Peace Agreements, reports from UNAMIR and other UN agencies, correspondence from a number of key players and an index of further material held in UN libraries. This book will be important to students of African history, international politics and of the UN's way of doing business but it is by no means faultless or complete. In sticking to the strategic level of decision making, Boutros Boutros-Ghali's history of the crisis remains detached to the point that many of his "primary sources" are, in fact, hearsay. (A significant proportion of his sources are actually his own reports to the Security Council and, since he was not on the ground, were self-evidently compiled from reports and submissions made by UN staff in Rwanda.) This is not to say that Boutros-Ghali is personally detached: in diplomatically-modest language, he makes plain his very great frustration at the time-consuming bureaucracy of his own organization and the inaction of the international community in the face of one of the most vicious and unsparing tragedies of recent times. At every turn, he reports the Security Council selection of the smallest and cheapest option open to it and even then, potential donors and contributors being unwilling to act. His problem must, however, be considered in the light of other operations and the vast number of blue berets serving around the globe in 1994/5. With the benefit of having served in UNAMIR and having witnessed some of the incidents reported by Boutros-Ghali at third or more distant hand, it is not surprising that this reviewer finds some imperfection. In particular, one of the printed texts outlines a situation from which he seems to have extracted the figure of 80,000 which he applies to the break out from Kibeho during the tragedy of 22 April 1995. The fact is that a much smaller number tried to break out from a crowd that had been 80,000 not long before. Notwithstanding this and other criticisms, Boutros-Ghali and the UN are to be commended for making this material accessible: it must, overall, prove of immense value to serious students of its subject.

Documents'mostly but not exclusively from the United Nations'are the star here, taking up 700 pages. Implicitly recognizing that the United Nations had only a minor role until the fighting ended in February 1991, nine-tenths of the documents date from the period since then, presenting the sanctions regime in all its military and economic complexity. They contain very little legalese or U.N. self-importance and lots of substance, including much hard-hitting analysis (a human rights report by Max van der Stoel, for example, cites Iraq as 'one huge prison').

A reader looking for Boutros-Ghali's few perfunctory introduction lines might look in vain and conclude that they got omitted. Not so; the secretary-general is credited for the fine 113-page analysis that opens the volume. Lest it be assumed that this be a courtesy for the U.N.'s chief executive, note that he cut his teeth as a professor of international law and, in addition to other books in this same U.N. series, compiled prior such books. But Boutros-Ghali's text, for all its virtues, is prisoner to the unique U.N. perspective. The first paragraph lauds that organization for acting 'as a powerful instrument for international peace and security.' The second presents the Iraqi assault on Kuwait as 'the first instance' since 1945 when 'one Member State sought to completely overpower and annex another''a bit of revisionist history that ignores other such instances (Israel and Bosnia) where more controversy reigns.

Middle East Quarterly, December 1996