Even though she has chosen to write about lofty and abstract human rights issues Samantha Power is a compelling writer, and it's because she's an exceptional researcher. For her book about the UN diplomat Sergio Vieira De Mello, who was killed when Al-Qaeda bombed the UN complex in Baghdad, Ms. Power conducted over 400 interviews, and spent four years on the project -- and the result is truly impressive. Each sentence is pithy, and with each chapter Ms. Power powerfully transports us from one continent to the next.

Ms. Power must be an obsessive romantic personality, someone who becomes easily passionate about and easily romanticizes a subject matter. As we read the book we can imagine how Sergio must have been on Ms. Power's mind all the time, even as she was teaching at Harvard and helping Barack Obama's campaign -- in fact Ms. Power informs us that she sees Barack Obama as resembling Sergio. But the problem with an obsession is that it is blinding, and that is the ultimate problem with this biography.

In Ms. Power's mind Vieira De Mello, a Brazilian diplomat's son whose entire professional life was within the UN system, was the quintessential international diplomat -- a brilliant linguist who was passionate and idealistic about protecting innocent civilians and ensuring their dignity but at the same time whose charisma and diplomacy enabled him to work with all factions in a conflict.

If he had lived he would have most certainly become UN Secretary-General but Vieira De Mello is dead, and Ms. Power aims to resurrect him to give the faltering international humanitarian system -- as embodied by the UN -- a role model to believe in and emulate. Ms. Power does try hard (throughout the book she makes Vieira De Mello's UN bosses look like self-serving bureaucrats), and if she were a more stylistic writer and less accomplished researcher she would have made a very compelling case. But unfortunately she is too talented a researcher, and by working hard to present the facts we're allowed to draw our own conclusions about Mr. Vieira De Mello. At best Vieira De Mello seems like a man of contradictions, always torn between his idealism and his loyalty to the United Nations. At worst he was a very talented international bureaucrat, who methodically and meticulously engineered his rise to the top of the United Nations system.

Consider Vieira De Mello's stint in Bosnia in the early nineties. This section is by far the most interesting in the book because it is so tragic and comical, ironic and ultimatey pathetic. With the collapse of the Soviet Union Bosnia was the first and best chance for Cold War organizations like the United Nations and NATO to re-invent and assert themselves for the new world order. The Serbs were massacring the Bosnians, and that was a fact that United Nations -- and Vieira De Mello -- felt it had to ignore in order to maintain impartiality, and deliver humanitarian aid. But, as Ms. Power says, maintaining impartiality is itself taking a stance, and by cozying up to Serbian officials responsible for genocide Vieira De Mello was being diplomatic but he was also condoning evil.

The UN's British commander would finally ask NATO to intervene against the Serbs, and then fearing that its peacekeepers on the ground would suffer Serbian retaliation he decided to inform the Serbs of the NATO strike, and the Serbs managed to shoot down a British warplane. The UN may claim it's trying to maintain impartiality but there's a simple word for the British commander's actions: "treason."

And if that incident wasn't silly enough Vieira de Mello volunteered to go into a section of Bosnia under siege from the Serbs. NATO had given the Serbs an ultimatum to lift the seige, and by going in to verify human rights abuses Vieira de Mello actually gave the Serbs protective cover. "Vieira de Mello's verification team seemed to be walking into a trap with their eyes open, as if they were wilfully placing themselves in harm's way in order to supply the Serbs with potential hostages and foil any potential NATO attack," Ms. Power writes. "He ignored the grumblings and focused on the task he had been assigned."

Ms. Power constantly repeats how kind and generous and loyal Vieira de Mello was to his employees and to the local civilians he was charged with caring for. But in this particular instance and throughout his career Vieira de Mello's behavior pattern is syptomatic of a megalomaniac and narcissist. He openly and flagrantly had affairs with his own employees even while he was married and had two sons. He expected complete loyalty from his inner circle, and even though Ms. Power never at once mentions it we can guess that he was a terrible manager and had terrible judgement of people. And for him what mattered all else was his career, and in the UN system that meant appeasing all politicians, even mass murderers: "[D]uring a bloody and morally fraught conflict in which the Serb side committed the bulk of the atrocities, his popularity with wrongdoers stemmed in part from his moral relativism," Ms. Power writes. "Even though he was unfailingly kind to Bosnian individuals, he had lost sight of the big picture. He seemed more interested in being liked and in maintaining access than in standing up for those who were suffering."

But of course Ms. Power writes so harshly of her hero in order to redeem him further into the narrative. By the late nineties the Serbs are now in Kosovo, and Vieira de Mello has apparently learned to stand up to mass murderers, and now instead of keeping silent highlighted Serbian abuses in Kosovo. "If he had once believed that his job was to carry out the aggregate will of powerful governments, he now acted as though he believed that promoting UN principles and protecting the UN flag entailed standing firmly for the advancement of human dignity, even if that required acting in defiance of those governments," Ms. Power writes.

Oh, really?

There is perhaps a more simple reason for Vieira de Mello's change in attitude -- his job had changed. Earlier in his career Vieira de Mello worked for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), an organization with a very specific mandate -- and if he wanted to rise within the organization he needed to return as many refugees home as possible. And so he was forced to work with loathsome governments in Serbia, Rwanda, and Cambodia to do his job.

By the time of Kosovo Vieira de Mello had left UNHCR for the UN bureaucracy in New York, and in his position if he wanted attention he needed to generate good publicity for himself, and attract powerful patrons.

Like the United States. Most of the UN bureaucracy was disgusted with the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, and the only UN bureaucrat whom the Bush administration could stand was Vieira de Mello so he inevitably found himself positioned for the job of UN envoy in Iraq. The Algerian diplomat Lakhdar Brahimi (the wildly popular UN envoy in Afghanistan who helped the post-Taliban country elect a president) is a much more accomplished international civil servant than Vieira de Mello, and he rejected the job offer because he rightly assumed he could in no way contribute. Vieira de Mello agreed to the post for four months, and we have to seriously wonder what he could have accomplished in that short a time except to suck up to the Americans and bolster his resume.

It is exceptionally unfair and unkind of me to criticize a man who is now dead and many regard as a saint. Ms. Power is using his legacy to try to resuscicate a dying organization, and I'm criticizing him in order to launch a much wider criticism of the United Nations.

The sad truth about the United Nations is that it may a humanitarian organization that best represents the ideals of humanity but it is fundamentally an organization -- and like any bureaucracy or company or system -- it is only concerned with its own survival, and so develops its own logic for survival -- which usually amounts to expanding for the sake of expansion. And no matter how charming and noble and talented the man Vieira de Mello was still an employee of this organization, and if he did not internalize UN values and methods he would have not risen as far as he did in the system. And as a good employee Vieira de Mello fought hard to justify the existence of the UN.

And perhaps that was Vieira de Mello's toughest and most impossible fight. The UN is a distortion on the natural order of things, and it is often a very bad distortion. In Bosnia the UN blue helmets on the ground meant NATO couldn't bomb Serbia -- and that only embolded the Serbs to commit more atrocities. And African war criminals used UN refugee camps as shelter, money-raising opportunities, and their base of operations. And where exactly in the world has the UN actually done something constructive?

An actual analysis of the UN and its usefulness in today's world would have greatly benefited this book. But Ms. Power is so obsessed over Vieira de Mello, and basically takes it for granted that the UN is a necessity. The UN is big and it's going to stick around for a long time because of bureaucratic inertia but -- fortunately for the world -- that doesn't make it a necessity.

I picked up on this book after Ms. Power's interview with Charlie Rose. Ms. Power's message is that Sergio Vieira de Mellow was not a saint but a human being driven by the desire to help mankind. Sergio should not be forgotten. This is a very readable lesson in the recent history of the U.N. and, in particular, the hopeless situation of the U.S. involvement in Iraq. August 19 is a day to reflect on the memory of Sergio Vieira and his mission.

The book is about Sergio Vieira de Mello, a servant of the United Nations, a zealot of human rights, and a man who fought to save the world. Sergio was one of the most brilliant diplomats of the time, and many were waiting for his appointment as the Secretary-General of the United Nations - a wish which would never realize because Vieira de Mello was killed by a bomb in his Iraqi mission in 2003. His noble path is described in the book.

Sergio was a great diplomat; he could negotiate and compromise on an unprecedented level. Apart from being indispensable for his missions and loved by his colleagues, Sergio managed to charm dictators, war criminals, and influential leaders; he was the only man in the United Nations who charmed George W. Bush. Vieira de Mello did not judge, neither did he blame the past; he looked to solve the problem. Due to his remarkable diplomatic skills, he solved crises in Lebanon, Cambodia, Bosnia, East Timor, Iraq, among many others. He was appointed as the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in 2002 and was nearing the appointment of the Sec-Gen in 2003, when his life was tragically lost.

Sergio was a man of high moral principles, who respected the United Nations above all. Impartiality of the United Nations was another rule of his work; prestige and dignity of the UN were his highest priority. Sergio carried the UN charter in his pocket all his life and cited the Resolutions of the Security Council by heart. His last words were "Don't pull out," relating to the UN Iraqi mission. Those words were said when he was buried below the rubbish after the explosion in the UN Iraqi office.

Ultimately, the book shows what the United Nations could be. I was as lucky as to read the draft chapters of the unpublished book in the class of Samantha Power two years ago; the class was called "Does the UN matter?" Vieira de Mello gave the answer to that question with his life and even more so with his death. The United Nations deserves respect and influence - especially due to leaders like Sergio Vieira de Mello.

I finished this book over a month ago. It it is unusual for me to take thirty days to review a book. However, this book continues to ricochet through my being.

Admittedly, Samantha's last book, The Pulitzer Prize winning "A Problem From Hell - America in an Age of Genocide" occupies a prominent place in my personal library. Chasing The Flame - Sergio Vieira De Mello And The Fight To Save The World" has earned the space next to her former book.

Once I began, I couldn't put Chasing The Flame down. Power has a literary and researcher's skill that that is unequivocally unique. The documentation and sheer magnitude of the effort are mind-boggling. Why? Why, one may ask would someone take the 4 years it took to write this story?

For me, versus many other reviewers, the lessons of Vieira de Mello's life and the most poignant aspects of the book are NOT the failures and demise of the U.N.

Contradictions - the human experience is one inhabited by contradictions. Some of those contradictions are self-initiated and self-imposed. Others are systemic and emanate from socio-economic, social structural inequities that evidence themselves throughout human history. Our response to these contradictions (as individuals, groups, organizations and government entities of all types) is particularly poignant. Vieira de Mello's life and career are evidence of that. This book is not an end to the discussion of issues it covers...it's a chronicle of a whole host of issues we can and must begin to discuss and act upon.

The human capacity for evil - Once again, Power chronicles this truth. I remain distressed at the ongoing capacity we as a species have for ignoring human atrocity and our penchant for "standing by" and/or failing to respond immediately and adequately to these situations as they arise --- as well as our penchant to ignore the conditions that continue to spawn them.

The United Nations - I am unequivocally convinced that the charter of the U.N. has been bastardized into a current state that has diluted the essential capabilities that the world currently requires from it. It's not the UN's fault. Frankly, it's ours and the member governments that comprise it. I am also hopeful that a restoration/re-engineering of the U.N. (long overdue) newly empowered and FULLY funded has the unrealized potential to prevent and address vastly more effectively the human suffering that is thriving all around our planet.(with prognostications of it's ever increasing frequency and depth of seriousness).

The face and being of anger seems to have a myriad of revitalized and new expressions of both form and substance here on Earth today. As stated by Jean-Salim Kanaan, a French-Egyptian political officer stationed in Iraq: " And God knows how much harm angry people can do."(p.436). We seem to have a tendency that has evolved with NGO's where we avoid the angry people (particularly the one's who are armed and inflicting death and destruction on innocent people). Vieira de Mello's life is evidence of an approach to the contrary. He sought out these people and spoke directly to them --- unarmed. Power's work has substantive implications for the urgent genesis of a new approach by the U.S. and others to foreign policy and international diplomacy.

Another incredibly poignant truth that we must revisit that emanated from the life of Vieria de Mello is captured in the following: "Although Vieira de Mello became an explicit advocate for human rights late in his career, he had lobbied on behalf of human beings for decades.After his death, the quality of his that was most often admired was his regard for individuals. His colleagues took note of how surprisingly rare it was, even in the world of humanitarianism, to find and official who actually looked out for human beings, one by one, as he or she encountered them." (p.530). This attribute of Vieira de Mello's life is pregnant with meaning for the individual citizen of planet Earth today. Imagine what might be possible if people began to act upon the quote above and actively begin to seek out the rescue of orphaned children, refugees etc. who require a new chance at life via removal from the hell of their current life conditions? --- 1@aTime. Perhaps we're being encouraged by Vieira de Mello's life to consider new ways of living --- I'm speaking to those who have a home, resources, seats at the kitchen table and a refrigerator with food in it. In a world where the delta between the haves and have-nots is becoming increasingly wider, the individual with resources continues to be ensconced comfortably with increasing social distance from the suffering that inhabits this planet. Vieira de Mello's life story begs the questions: "What can (must) I do? How can I help? Can I become a part of the solution?"

Vieira de Mello's statement that, "We live in fearful times and fear is a bad advisor" (p. 364) is a clarion call to a reawakening from the darkness of the nightmare that has cast it's pall over all of us, particularly during the past eight years. Hope and dreaming of new possibilities always sheds the light that destroys fear. However, it must be accompanied by new, risky, courageous forms of action that Vieria de Mello's life demonstrates for us all.

"Humanitarian crises are always political crises" (p. 219) is a truth revealed throughout the life of Vieira de Mello. Again, a wholesale readjustment in the thought processes and actions of governments and our approach to human rights atrocities (and their prevention) continues to be a tremendous challenge, yet an opportunity, during this, the 21st century.

For all those who are trumpeting their excitement over the possibility of a forthcoming movie about this book --- I remain reluctant. There is simply no substitute for reading this superbly crafted literary art form. Samantha Power has dedicated her life to bringing us Pulitzer Prize caliber insights into the plight of human rights atrocities that continue to decimate this planet....now chronicling the amazing life of one of the foremost participants in the amelioration of this devastating reality - Vieira de Mello's Chasing The Flame deserves the same serious Pulitzer consideration as well.

I was changed by this book. You will be too. Buy it, Savor it. Ponder it. Get involved. Speak out. We can change this world. Together.

Bill Dahl

The ingredients that make for a great biography are the same as those that make for a great work of fiction: A strong cast of well-developed characters, a rich setting of details and complexity that draws the reader in, a gripping narrative that keeps the reader turning the pages... Witness, for example, Walter Isaacson's biography of Kissinger, a tour-de-force recreation of the world of 1970's international diplomatic intrigues. Mr. Isaacson, of course, may have an easier task, as Henry Kissinger is not a martyred humanitarian hero and in many ways much easier to poke fun at. But Ms. Power's subject, Sergio Vieira de Mello, was also a fascinating character in his own right. Like Kissinger he was a man of striking contradictions - a prodigious workaholic who could live for months on end on a spartan diet of rice and chocolate bars in the field, yet at the same time a bon vivant of such vanity that he carried around packets of fabric wipes so his starched khakis would always remain spotless after a day through the mud.

Vieira de Mello had led a fascinating life, and Ms Power's book did paint a well-rounded portrait of the man. However, the book could have benefited from much better developed supporting characters, not to mention more insightful expositions of the complex events that revolved around them. It was also too long, and plodding at times. Over all the book would have been a much better read if the author had focused on fewer episodes of VdM's life with more depth. This is the sort of book that the reader may wish to read selectively. Personally I found the chapters on the Balkans, Cambodia and Iraq to be the best reads.

Nonetheless, the book gets 4 stars for the unique perspective it provides into the workings of the UN. Its many fly-on-the-wall accounts of high level UN decision-making provides not only insights into substantive policy debates but also the clash of personalities. Calling this a "fawning hagiography" is unfair, although the author does tend to be overly reverential and a bit too ready to take people's words at face value. The Vieira de Mello that emerges, for all his strengths and foibles, is an apt embodiment of the UN. High-minded and sometimes truly heroic, he was generally at his best working on projects of relative moral clarity, over which there was broad consensus, such as the successful return of over 350,000 Cambodian refugees to their homes. When he ventured into more murky political waters, the qualities that served him well at the UNHCR became liabilities. A knack for charming powerful people is useful when negotiating food shipments. The same eagerness to be liked turns into a tendency to side with power in tough political negotiations. In Bosnia he was so ready to cave in to the Serbs that people started calling him "Serbio". And it wasn't simply a matter of pragmatism - at the end of his tenure he was so determined to remain on good terms with all sides, that he spent an entire afternoon shopping for a going-away present for Milosevic, even as other branches of the UN were investigating Milosevic fo war crimes.

De Mello never mastered the art of saying no. When it counted, such as during the debates leading up to the Coalition invasion of Iraq, his instinct was to stay on the fence rather than risk courting unpopularity. He did not speak out when the US began building pressure for war in the fall of 2002. He declined to take part when Rund Lubbers, the UNHCR commissioner, attempted to rally senior UN officials to jointly oppose the war on the eve of its outbreak. Even in the face of mounting evidence of Coalition mis-steps in Iraq, de Mello, then serving as the UN High Commissionerr on Human Rights, was so evasive that one British TV interviewer lost patience and asked outright, "Is the human rights commissioner too scared to speak out against the United States?"

Cynics claimed that he was angling to succeed Annan as Secretary General down the line. He might or might not have been, but he was certainly loath to antagonize powerful people in the Bush administration. His reward was to become the administration's preferred choice to head the UN mission in Iraq. De Mello often insisted that even if he had spoken out, it would not have made one whit of difference in US policy. Perhaps. But his own life might have been saved.

In the last chapter of the book the author drew a number of lessons from de Mello's many achievements. All very worthy, but perhaps an additional lesson can be drawn from his failings: For a statesman, popularity is the least achievement of all.

Samantha Power reveals in this book why she is deserving of a Pulitzer Prize. A humanistic view of a man who was not only a human but also one of the world's greatest humanitarians. Changed my corrupted view of the UN into one of understanding and appreciation. Thank you to Sergio and his family & friends for your dedicated service to humanity.

About half-way through Chasing the Flame, Sergio Vieira de Mello advises a younger UNHCR official to "be very graphic because that is how you grab people's attention. And our success at UNHCR depends on our ability to get and hold people's attention."

It's a piece of advice that the book's author, Samantha Power, brings to life throughout the book. From the Khmer Rouge shooting at a UN helicopter that was lowering a housing container into the jungle, "not aggressively...but trying to alert the strangers that they were on the verge of making house in a minefield," to convincing Serbian smugglers to sneak 80,000 blankets into Bosnian territory by handing them certificates saying "UN Consultant," to Laurent Kabila's high-heeled lizard-skin disco dancing shoes (worn together with his starched uniform), Power has an amazing ability to pull out complex details that both grab/hold the reader's attention and act as metaphors for the bigger picture.

These are not the affect-oriented visuals that one associates with UNICEF commercials - the exceptions, like a scene of a Rwandan man committing suicide by drowning himself in a shallow puddle, are so powerful they could never fit into a cliché - rather, these moments are effortlessly telling precisely because they are complex and many sided. Power's writerly decisions turn the book into a page-turner as gripping as any novel, but their cumulative effect creates a picture of layers of our world that we don't normally see. The details accumulate and become more than themselves.

Other reviewers call Sergio a "hero." I don't know about that. I'm not even sure I came out of the book liking the guy. What did come through to me was a well-rounded picture of a very interesting man who kept learning as he shuttled from one tragic focal point of the world to another. Through Sergio, Power paints a real-life picture of the ultimately unsolvable tensions between pragmatism and idealism, and, more generally, of the way power and people interact in some of the most difficult conditions on our planet. If each detail is an expert brush stroke, then the painting, in the end, is not merely a portrait of Sergio. It is a complex portrait of a complex world, with Sergio simultaneously a fully fleshed out, conflicted, real person, and an archetype - the human being that, in the end, is the fulcrum of all tensions and decisions. What makes this book so important, besides its art, is that these are the real life tensions and decisions that have defined the world we live in.

To be honest, I only picked up Chasing the Flame out of respect for its Pulitzer-prize-winning author. A biography of a bureaucrat is not a subject that I would normally find interesting. But Power chose her subject well. For all his faults, Sergio was an extraordinary man whose willingness to keep learning from the awful historical moments in the centre of which he continually found himself -- which he, in fact, chased throughout his life -- makes him a powerful lens through which Power clears away layers of murk to show us a side of our world that is normally obscured. Chasing the Flame doesn't give easy answers, but it does give a graphic picture of the man who would have been the next UN Secretary General, and of the world behind the headlines in the international section. It's an extraordinary book.

An extraordinary book about the life-work of an extraordinary man. Those who rated this book poorly simply because they want something more exciting (and not too intellectual) will have to stick with fiction.

This, to all appearances, is a fawning, overlong hagiography of a rising UN bureaucrat. Sergio Vieira de Mello is blessed with matinee idol good looks and Sorbonne schooled charm. At the Sorbonne in 1968, he subscribed to the doctrines of Hegel, Marx, and Sartre, and joined in the student riots, acquiring a scar on his brow from a police truncheon, which he thenceforth proudly displays as a war wound. Other playful antics as a young UNHCR employee in Paris include the hurling of rocks and shouting, "Imperialiste!" at random American-made cars which pass on streets, and advising his friends that he won't talk to Americans because they "smell of capitalism."

Power's opening scene reads like satire: a romantic tete a tete over dinner and bottles of fine wine, when Vieira de Mello was a dashing 45 and she a blushing 24, on the night the Serbs violated the UN mandated safe zone and invaded Gorazde. Sergio seems much more interested in his dinner with the lovely Samantha.

A cell call comes in to the table from the UN Commander. Samantha gets up to give Sergio his privacy, but he waves her back to her seat. The winsome journalist is to observe Sergio's manly command of world affairs. The Serbs have relieved the UN peacekeepers of their guns then shot them, thumbing their nose at UN mandates. Soon, a second phone call says that a wounded peacekeeper has died. Oh well. The seasoned diplomat and the starry eyed girl get back to their cabernet.

Samantha asks what will the UN do? With a flourish Sergio pulls from his pocket a rumpled photocopy of the UN safe zone resolution, kept always, like an alibi, close to his chest. The member states have the UN they deserve, he thunders. Look at this language, at this comma! This comma placed just before the subordinate clause says that we are to protect the civilians in the safe zone, and yet how vague it all is. How unclear! This is all the fault of the member nations. They wrote it that way, damn them! Ah, they have the UN they deserve! You see this comma could, conceivably, be interpreted to mean that the UN mandate that peacekeepers defend themselves and protect safe zones in fact means, why, the very opposite! Voila. The UN can do nothing. We wouldn't want to be sued, god forbid, would we? Surely a fate worse than genocide. Here in black and white it is. We can do nothing. Nothing at all.

Sergio draws himself up, cocklike, proud in his UN-ness, in his advocacy of all that is good and global and true. He lectures his dinnermate on the UN's greatest and noblest principle: its "neutrality." And Samantha is -- wonderstruck with admiration! How elegant is Sergio. How passionate and scrupulous. Verily he is a hero, for he has read so deeply and so well the noble text of the UN resolution. He has perceived the weighty meaning of its comma. Why it has never even occurred to her, a lawyer, to read the text of a UN resolution. Yet the noble Sergio has done it with such panache. Such style. Such exquisite taste. Samantha is awestruck. She is deeply, deeply humbled.

600 pages of The Ballade of Sergio follow...

Perhaps it is all an exercise in subtle irony and under-cover truthtelling by Ms. Power. She is unquestionably a brilliant researcher and reporter. Her pious political correctitude can be appalling, and the book is far too long, but then, reporters don't get access if they don't kowtow. Her facts are likely to fuel all sides of the debate about whether the UN is of any use anymore, or is just a corrupt self-perpetuating bureaucracy which ought to be put out of business and replaced by some leaner such forum, preferably one with minimal standards of admission.

This is a fawning, overlong hagiography of a rising UN bureaucrat, the son of a Brazilian diplomat, blessed with matinee idol good looks and charm skills courtesy of the Sorbonne. Ah the Sorbonne, where, back in fabled '68, our hero joined his fellows in the student riots, gathering a scar from police truncheon on his noble brow to show for it. Which he puckishly points out to Ms. Power.

Ms. Power's opening scene, a romantic dinner over candlelight and bottles of wine--when Vieira de Mello was 45 and she a blushing 24--reads like rank satire. That night, the Serbs violate the UN mandated safe zone and invade Gorazde. Vieira de Mello's sole concern: to continue his cozy tete a tete with his adorable young charge.

A cell call comes in from the UN Commander. Samantha gets up from her chair to give the top UN official his privacy. He motions her back to her seat. The awestruck young journalist shall audit Sergio's manly command of world affairs. The Serbs have just lifted the middle finger to the UN peacekeepers "guarding" Gorazde, by calmly plucking their weapons from their hands and shooting them, killing one. This is the message of the Serbs to the pusillanimous UN and its dictates. Sergio's response? Ah, nothing shall interfere with dinner. Certainly not with the charming Ms. Power.

Samantha asks Sergio meekly, what will the UN do? He pulls a rumpled piece of paper with the UN resolution safe zone printed upon it from his pocket, waving it with a flourish before her. The member states have the UN they deserve! he thunders. Look at this resolution language! Just look, look at this comma. This comma! Which has been placed just in front of this subordinate clause that says that we are to protect the civilians in the safe zone! You see? You see how vague it is, how unclear? It is all the fault of those damned member states. They made it all this way. The comma makes it all so unclear. If the peacekeepers were actually authorized to fire any shots, as it seems to say right here, were it not for that malicious comma, why then, somebody might be sued and lose in court! The UN can do nothing! Nothing at all!

Sergio draws himself up then, cocklike in his seat. He is proud in his UN-ness. In his noble advocacy of all that is good and global and true. And Samantha is filled with--admiration. How elegant is Sergio. How passionately diligent. Verily, he is truly a hero, for he has so nobly read, so deeply, so clearly, the UN resolution. Why, it has never even occurred to her, a lawyer, ever to do something so unusual as to read, and with such exquisite care, a UN resolution. Samantha is awestruck and humbled.


And 600 pages of this follows....

Samantha Powers portrayal of Sergio Vieira de Mello is a outstanding biography of a modern hero. It reads like a thriller and should win her another Pullitzer prize. Sergio was a man with passion for his convictions always ready to accept new challenges in dangerous areas of the world. Thanks to her book we have the depiction of a true hero that gave his life so that a bit of peace and justice could emerge from that part of the world.
Samantha should be congratulated and I hope she will be part of Obama foreign advise team.
Daniel Sette Camara, MD

This is an excellent book with some flaws. While there are plenty of good quotes that take jabs at the field work done by the UN including by Sergio Vieira de Mello himself none of them are adequately examined, but then you could say that wasn't the point of the book. I have comments on three of the countries de Mello (the name most people called him that I knew) worked.

1. Jarat Chopra resigned over deep disagreements with de Mello about governing East Timor but Ms Power never says what they are. Two essays by Chopra found online provide a view from the other side. In the book one of them is a mere footnote. They are worth reading.

2. While the book makes de Mello look like almost a one man show in Rwanda I recommend Sadako Ogata's book The Turbulent Decade: Confronting the Refugee Crises of the 1990s on her time as the head of UNHCR to get a another perspective of how the upper echelon of the UN works. Her chapter on Rwanda gives a much more detailed and compelling story of this very difficult situation where UNHCR was left on its own. The chapters on Bosnia also provide a wider view.

3. Then there is Iraq and the riveting final chapter in the book. It's an excellent narrative on the declining security situation in Baghdad in June-September 2003 and how institutions like the UN reacted to it.

I was dismayed with the Epilogue. It was so boring I considered not finishing the book after reading more than 500 pages. It read like a UN document, that's how bad it is.

As an observation, no matter how good de Mello was and no matter how good and loyal his staff was at the field level most aid workers are not aware of these efforts or even know who these people are. The UN is there monitoring and more often than not, interpreting rules on why something cannot be done and being criticized for its lack of competence. Programs run by the UN are sometimes successful despite the unintentional efforts of the UN to ruin them. Even with de Mello, the UN had a long way to go and it still does.

My favorite quote in the book - and there are many good ones - is the response he gave to a young UNHCR staffer at his farewell in Geneva. When asked what advice he had to give to a young staff member, he said, "Be in the field. That's what I built my career on. That's what relevant. Nothing else matters."

Overall, an excellent book. Well written. Re-building a country is not easy. I highly recommend this book.

Poorly written - slow and plodding. An interesting subject, but was made boring by apparently using issues papers to write it - written like a history teacher.

Samantha Power has rendered a great service to students of international affairs, and indeed to the international community at large, with this splendid biography of a gifted actor on that great stage.

Vieira de Mello personified the United Nations in both its strengths and its weaknesses, and Power makes very clear just what those are.

He embodied the spirit of the internationalist: neutrality, impartiality and unfailing courage to go where the member states were too often reluctant to go - but not reluctant at all to send people like him, who never, until the end, hesitated to answer the call of duty. At the same time, his zeal for impartiality too often led him into a moral relativism which eventually became distorted into complicity with evil. He was quicker than many to realize that trap that the world body had fallen into, especially in reflecting on the U.N.'s experiences in Rwanda and in Bosnia Herzegovina in the 1990's.

Sergio Vieira de Mello was a renaissance man: philosopher, linguist, historian, scholar of many fields. He was a charming and handsome man, a highly sociable man who was nevertheless capable of brutally hard work, often under conditions as uncomfortable as they were dangerous. He was concerned about all the peoples with and for whom he worked, and cared - and showed he cared - for individual refugees and displaced persons as for the most junior of his co-workers. He was intensely ambitious, but never hesitated to dispute the views, policies and directions of his desk-bound "superiors" in New York and in the capitols of the member states. In the most striking example of this, he completely revised the intent of the mission in East Timor, devolving a degree of autonomy on the East Timorese quite other than that in his mandate, and on a timetable of his own devising. New York was appalled at this, but Vieira de Mello left the Secretariat little alternative but to accept his re-writing his own orders. It was just this early devolution and restoration of sovereignty that he urged on the Coalition Authority in Iraq, but to no avail - L.Paul Bremer had his mind made up, and his mistakes are becoming history, but a very different history than the one Vieira de Mello made in East Timor.

The only time in his long career that Vieira de Mello expressed reluctance to accept a posting was his last - to Iraq as the Special Representative of the Secretary-General. He arrived in Baghdad on June 2, 2003. When he died there six weeks later it was, as Power writes in the last line of the book, as though he had been "buried beneath the weight of the United Nations itself."

Samantha Power is to be congratulated on this fine book. It will be read by those concerned with the history Vieira de Mello lived, but will also be enjoyed by and will reward those less informed of the events described. It may be read as a huge adventure story - for that was what Vieira de Mello's life was, and Power has captured that spirit of adventure with a novelist's skill. Sergio Vieira de Mello was the United Nations' Kennedy,and we who hardly knew him can only express our thanks for her contribution to our knowledge and understanding of these interesting times.

It only remains to wait for the movie - and trust that Tom Cruise will not be the star.

Book loses one star--perhaps unfairly--for not integrating secondary sources and using the *combination* of this extraordinary biography and the Brahimi Report and other core documents, to illuminate why the UN desperately needs a United Nations Open-Source Decision-Support Information Network (UNODIN).

+ Sergio Vieira de Mello (henceforth SVM) spent forty-years as a UN gad-fly, and his resume of tens of short assignments interspersed with a handful of 2-3 year assignments is a testimony to all that is wrong--not with him, but rather--with UN recruitment, training, continuity of operations, and lack of decision support.

+ The book opens with the observation that Paul Bremer (the ultimate US dilettante who set us back five to ten years while losing tens of billions of dollars) refused most of SVM's suggestions, especially on setting timelines (the same ideas General Garner adopted before he was fired by Dick Cheney and replaced with Bremer). We are told his last words were "Oh shit" and I somehow doubt that.

+ Vague mandates were a constant problem (see Peacekeeping Intelligence: Emerging Concepts for the Future for a full discussion of why the Brahimi Report still needs to be implemented, so the mandate can be informed, the force configured based on ground truth, etc.)

+ UN got into "governing" for the first time in Kosovo, and was completely ill-equipped for the task.

+ SVM reflected with the author that the world was too big to ignore but too complex to manage quickly or cheaply. Later in the book he is cited as recognizing that the UN is so dysfunctional that governments work around it (while foundations beg for effective focal points for their giving totaling $500B a year), but that governments are not prone to support long term interests in eradicating the ten high level threats as lain out in A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility--Report of the Secretary-General's High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change

+ SVM was an impressive scholar. He finished first out of 198 at the Sorbonne in Philosophy. He did a Masters in moral philosophy (a tautological redundancy I would have thought) and then a doctoral in two levels, one in 1974 and one in 1985. It was here that he understood that governments are not adept at preventing crises nor as rebuilding failed societies.

- First level doctorate: "The Role of Philosophy in Contemporary History," with key line "Not only has history ceased to feed philosophy, but philosophy no longer feeds history."

- Second "Etat" doctorate: "Civitas Maxima; Origins, Foundations, and Philosophical and Practical Significance of the Supranational Concept." Those wishing to learn more about the failure of the nation-state and the mistakes of Westphalia can begin with The Health of Nations: Society and Law beyond the State with Web of Deceit: The History of Western Complicity in Iraq, from Churchill to Kennedy to George W. Bush as the aperitif, and Betrayal of Trust: The Collapse of Global Public Health as the strong finish.

+ He composed his speeches on hotel note pads, observing that if he could not fit his argument to a hotel pad, he probably did not know what he was trying to say.

+ At this point I have a note, overall a very good use of biography to offer a "sense" of the UN, but lacking in synthesis, recommendations, or secondary sources.

+ Early in the book and throughout, one senses that Lebanon is the UN's modern birthplace, and where it has been permanently hospitalized if not euthanized.

+ SVM is quoted as saying that constructive change required "a synthesis of utopia and realism." I urge the reader to visit Earth Intelligence Network to see this being implemented.

+ Pages 87-89 provide a marvelous condemnation of satellite surveillance as a panacea. SPOT Image which does ten meter or 1:50,000 multispectral imagery, identified land "suitable for resettlement." Actual ground inspection failed the satellite findings, which did not see the land mines or the malarial mosquitoes.

+ SVM valued local staff, actively cultivated their inputs regardless of rank or function, and he is described as having a keen eye for symbolism.

+ We learn from this book that UN "teams" are assembled in an ad hoc fashion reflecting the whims and past good relations of the ubber boss, and I for one recognized what chaos and discontinuity this represents for all elements of the UN System.

+ We learn that when the UN arrives the cost of everything skyrockets, not least because UN employees get $140 a day, which in the specific instance of Cambodia or Kosovo, I forget, was the average ANNUAL income for any given person. I point to William Shawcross's unforgettable Deliver Us from Evil: Peacekeepers, Warlords and a World of Endless Conflict. Read my review of that book to see the relevance.

+ SVM proves clever in one instance, suggesting that smugglers not only be hired to get around a blockage against blankets, but that they be given dignity in the form of a UN consultant certificate. From many such accounts the author excels at painting a portrait of a complex and very intelligence UN official.

+ It is at this point that I check the index to discover that neither the word "information" nor the word "intelligence" nor the compound word "decision-support" appear.

+ The author cites SVM as saying that he was fed up with American bullying--I can certainly understand that--and that the hardest part of peacekeeping was internal peacekeeping (within the UN's dysfunctional family).

+ It is here I note: "At every turn: 'We don't know; 'We don't have the information; 'We are too few to certify....'"

+ Then I see the golden nugget, on page 219, in his words: "We are so remarkably ill-informed. We go into a place, we have no intelligence, we don't understand the politics, and we can't identify the points of leverage. See the PKI book cited above, and also the forthcoming book, PEACE INTELLIGENCE: Assuring a Good Life for All, with a Foreword by MajGen Patrick Cammaert, who with this book and a decade of effort, got many at the UN to understand that Brahimi had it exactly right: intelligence is decision support using legal ethical open sources, and it has nothing to do with espionage. The raw book is at OSS.Net/Peace, just add the www. at the beginning.

+ The book continues with many vignettes where the UN elements are uninformed, therefore they do poor planning (lousy mandates, crummy force structures, no tactical combat charts for landing zones, etc) and hence they are often over-whelmed.

+ SVM saw a need for and proposed that the UN address the constant law enforcement gap by maintaining a roster of pre-trained and available multinational police, judges, lawyers, and prosecutors. See Policing the New World Disorder: Peace Operations and Public Security, my review includes notice of the fact that most UN "police," e.g. those from Nigeria, can neither read nor drive.

+ We learn that SVM was acutely aware of how the UN's reputation for competence plummeted in the 1990's and how he learned in East Timor was that Legitimacy was Performance Based. As a side note, when East Timor went down I led one of 40 different efforts to answer the same three questions: 1) where are the bodies; 2) where can we land; and 3) who is is coming when, and what are they bringing. That was when I realized the need for a Multinational Decision-Support Center. On legitimacy, see The Search for Security: A U.S. Grand Strategy for the Twenty-First Century

+ The book comes to a close with several useful notes.

- Law and order gap a constant recurring theme.

- SVR saw Iraq as a peer nation meriting respect rather than patronizing from the US

- Excellent discussion of the days leading up to the attack on the UN headquarters; to the dismissal by the US of all UN requests for information or security, and the realization, too late after the attack on the Jordanian embassy, that the UN HQ was a "soft target."

- KUDOS to LtCol John Curran, whose foresight and rehearsal to include identification of all relevant helicopter med-evac landing zones, ensured that no one died for lack of very rapid medical evacuation. I certainly hope the UN put him for a Legion of Merit, at the very least.

The Epilogue is bland.

+ UN is a broken system.

+ SVM said "the future is to be invented."

+ Legitimacy matters

+ Spoilers must be engaged

+ Fearful people must be made more secure

+ Dignity is cornerstone of order

+ Outsiders must bring humility and patience.

Two other books (see also my many lists):
High Noon 20 Global Problems, 20 Years to Solve Them
Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization, Third Edition

Sergio Vieira de Mello of Brazil (simply "Sergio" to many) was the personification of what the United Nations could and should be. As Paul Bremer's adviser Ryan Cocker once said, "Sergio is as good as it gets not only for the UN, but for international diplomacy." Sergio was the UN Secretary General's "ultimate go-to guy", a nation builder in the world's toughest spots like East Timor, Cambodia, Kosovo. No one who met him - from George W. Bush on the eve of the Iraq War, to the Khmer Rouge, to Slobodan Milosevic - came away untouched by his intelligence, physical bearing, charisma and integrity. It was a major blow to the world when he and 14 other UN staff were killed on August 19th 2003 by an al-Qeada suicide bomber at the Canal Hotel in Baghdad, an event that has become known as the UN's "9/11". He was often spoken of as candidate for the position of UN Secretary General, but his career was cut short before he had a chance to become the world-renowned elder statesman he was destined to be. This biography by Pulitzer Prize winning Samantha Power is a monument to his legacy and should connect with a wide audience. Not only an enthralling story of adventure (Sergio was almost always in the field in dangerous situations and places), but equally a revelation of what was happening behind the headlines in major crisis around the world over the past 30 years - and it is the story of the UN itself, as mirrored in the ups and downs of Sergio's life and character, its faults, weaknesses and strengths.

Power has managed to convey Sergio's persona with utmost sympathy, seductively drawing the reader into Sergio's world. His younger staff members were often likened to puppy dogs who followed him around, at one point even into the bushes to take a leak - I often felt this way reading his biography, like a puppy dog I didn't want him to leave or for the book to end, for the inevitable to happen. I dreaded the last chapter titled "August 19 2003" - it is the most thrilling chapter in the book, a masterpiece of journalistic writing - it can bring the reader to tears in a way no fiction could achieve. Samantha Power is an adviser to Barak Obama "the person whose rigor and compassion bear the closest resemblance to Sergio's that I have ever seen," she says in the credits. Power also knows Terry George, director of Hotel Rwanda, who advised her on this book and who expressed an interest in making a movie version, we can only hope.

Samantha Power has done it again -- just as compelling, just as timely and just as important as The Problem From Hell. The story of Sergio Vieira de Mello would be compelling stuff in its own right. But the way Power sets Vieira de Mello's story against the most immediate and consequential questions about how to best deal with the current challenges in the world is absolutely brilliant. Read it for the story, read it for the questions, read it for the answers, just make sure you read it soon.