Customer Reviews:
 Not a book to make you excited baout the UN June 6, 2006
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Beware: bias in favour of the US.
If you can ignore this (it's v. easy to spot) the book is interesting enough and a good source of background information. As a veteran of a few Model United Nations Conferences I already knew most of the information and I think that this book would only interest someone who already knew a bit about the UN and/or has a genuine interest in it. This book may be designed to build your interest in the UN but I personally don't think it would spark many people to find out more.
Interesting read, but tone is a bit too lightweight January 28, 2004
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
As Fasulo notes, most Americans are aware that the large, media-covered sessions of the General Assembly and the Security Council are carefully prepared and scripted events. What is surprising is that even the day-to-day sessions are usually pre-determined. Most of the discussion and decision-making takes place not within the General Assembly or the Committees it breaks into, and often not even within the small, off-the-record groups that those Committees in turn become, but in the stereotypical backroom talks of two or perhaps three ambassadors at a time. Policy is argued, Fasulo shows, by a core group of players within the UN, with much of the political maneuvering off stage and unseen. The debate has been decided by vote-building and consensus beforehand, rather than by persuasion on the speaker's platform.This book will appeal most to those with a solid knowledge of the UN who hope to understand better the reasons behind the UN's decisions, and how those decisions are made. Those seeking more general information on the UN will be able to find this, but may find as well some difficulty in separating that information from the entwined UN-derived descriptions of those workings.
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