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New Book Peacemaker - Available from September 2025

“A wonderful subject, beautifully written, evoking a world startlingly like and unlike our own - a reminder of paths tragically not taken, of idealism and cynicism - of how much the United Nations offered and could still offer. Essential reading for anyone interested in the origins and possibilities of our current global crisis.”
― Rory Stewart, author of Politics on the Edge

“Beautiful, gripping, and indispensable, this biography of the longest-serving United Nations secretary-general is also a reminder of almost forgotten aspirations for a postcolonial world beyond endless war and enduring hierarchy. The dreams revisited in this eye-opening and uplifting book have an enormous claim on the attention of Americans at a crossroads in their relation to global affairs.”
― Samuel Moyn, author of The Last Utopia

“A gift: a primer on the Cold War era, revives the pivotal role of U Thant―the first non-European to lead the UN―and foreshadowing the conflicts we face today.”
― Elizabeth Becker, author of You Don’t Belong Here: How Three Women Rewrote the Story of War

“A beautifully written biography about a man who led the UN through a time of great turbulence, risk and uncertainty. Important reading at any time in history; essential in the world of today.”
― Peter Frankopan

REVIEWS AND MORE INFORMATION

“A brilliant portrait not just of a great and unjustly forgotten man, but of an entire age. That age feels very distant now: an era of optimism and idealism, when the postcolonial world first shook off its imperial shackles and began to test its strength. Peacemaker is a model of biographical thoroughness and insight, beautifully written and artfully shaped and plotted, it tells its improbable and altogether extraordinary story with an enviable mixture of writerly skill and scholarly authority.”
― William Dalrymple
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“Amazing. This book will come as a revelation even to scholars of the UN in the Cold War period.”
― Frances Fitzgerald, author of Fire in the Lake

“U Thant devoted his life to the pursuit of peace in a fearsomely fractured world. With empathy, care, and scholarly rigor, Thant Myint-U reminds us that the truly courageous never abandoned their struggles for justice, even in the darkest of times.”
― Kevin Boyle, author of The Shattering: America in the 1960s

©2019 by Thant Myint-U. 

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