Chasing the Flame: Sergio Vieira de Mello and the Fight to Save the World [Hardcover]

Samantha Power (Author)

Book Description

Release date: February 14, 2008

Sergio Vieira de Mello - a humanitarian, peacemaker and state builder - was at centre of the most significant geopolitical crises of the last half-century. Born in 1948, just as the post - World War II order was taking shape, he died in a terrorist attack on UN headquarters in Iraq in 2003 as the battle lines in the twenty first-century's first great polarizing struggle were being drawn. This is a dual biography: the story of a brave and enigmatic man who never stopped learning and had a thirty-year head start in thinking about the central challenges of our time, and the biography of a perilous world whose ills are too big to ignore, but also too complex to manage quickly or cheaply. Even as Vieira de Mello arranged food deliveries, organized refugee returns, or negotiated with warlords, he pressed his colleagues to join him in grappling with such questions as: When should killers be engaged, and when should they be shunned? When is military force justified? How can outsiders play a role in healing broken people and broken places? Vieira de Mello did not have the luxury of simply posing these questions; he had to find answers, apply them, and live with the consequences. "Chasing the Flame" brings us deep into the thorniest episodes of recent world history. We wade into the conflagration in the Middle East by joining Vieira de Mello on his troubleshooting assignment in Lebanon after Israel's 1982 invasion. We see the lasting damage done by the proxy wars of the Cold War as we watch Vieira de Mello try to tame the murderous Khmer Rouge. We relive the explosion of sectarian and ethnic militancy as we track his efforts to negotiate an end to the slaughter in Bosnia and the reign of genocidal 'refugee warriors' in Congo. We grasp the complexity of rebuilding and governing war-torn societies as we endure the frustrations of his quasi-colonial governorships of Kosovo and East Timor. And we see how terrorism was fueled and Iraq was lost, by witnessing his struggles as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and as UN representative in Baghdad, where he fell victim to the country's first major suicide bomb. Readers of "Chasing the Flame" will recognize the particular mixture of deep reporting and incisive analysis that Samantha Power uses to mine Vieira de Mello's life for the lessons it offers each of our own. In this gripping and finely reasoned book, Power reveals Sergio Vieira de Mello's powerful legacy of pragmatism and humanity in an age sorely in need of both.

--This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The death of the charismatic Brazilian chief of the U.N. Mission to Iraq in a 2003 terrorist bombing symbolized both the U.N.'s haplessness—he died because rescuers lacked the training and equipment to free him from the rubble—and its idealism. In this sprawling biography, Vieira de Mello's life symbolizes the tragic contradictions of coping with humanitarian crises. Journalist Power, author of the Pulitzer-winning The Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide, follows Vieira de Mello through a U.N. career spent in hot spots like Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Kosovo. His tasks were many: implementing peace accords, settling refugees, overseeing elections, running the government of East Timor. In each posting, he confronts a hydra-headed monster of communal violence and poverty, plus difficulties compounded by U.N. red tape, miserly budgets and uncaring Western governments. Agonizing dilemmas abound. Should refugees be fed or sent home? Should U.N. peacekeepers observe or intervene? Should past atrocities be prosecuted or overlooked? Playing by ear, Vieira de Mello charts an erratic course through these conundrums. Sometimes he's a human rights zealot, sometimes he cozies up to the Khmer Rouge; sometimes he negotiates with the Serbs, sometimes he wants to bomb them. Vieira de Mello comes off as a charming diplomat, a canny politician and an inspiring leader, and the author celebrates his flexibility and pragmatism (while criticizing his failures). Power wants to extract lasting lessons for the international community's efforts to head off humanitarian catastrophes and mend failed states from his experience. Unfortunately, it's hard to discern through his improvisations any systematic approach to nation building or to such vexed issues as humanitarian military intervention and regime change. The lack of perspective isn't helped by the biographical format, as the peripatetic Vieira de Mello jets from one conflagration to the next, then on to a romantic getaway with a mistress or to give a murky speech on Kant. We get the impression that U.N. missions are inevitably a hopeless muddle unless Sergio, with his unique talents, parachutes in to fix things; the book may thus inadvertently encourage critics of the U.N.-style interventionism that Power supports. Readers will gain an appreciation of Vieira de Mello's gifts, but not the method to his magic. B&w photos. (Mar. 6)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Bookmarks Magazine

Samantha Power, a professor at Harvard, met Sergio Vieira de Mello when she was a journalist in Bosnia in 1994. Although he charmed her as he did everyone else, she has written a balanced biography of the flawed but dedicated and likable man. While Power impressed the critics with her research, she failed to convince all of them of her arguments. Several reviewers also noted that Power’s writing, laden with detail and subtle layering, doesn’t rise to the level of her Pulitzer Prizeâ€"winning A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide (2002) until the very end, when she recounts Vieira de Mello’s last moments. As much a critique of the United Nations and its policies as the story of a man battling injustice, Chasing the Flame, despite being cited as a somewhat slow read, is a significant contribution to our understanding of global affairs and the future of peacekeeping.
Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 640 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Press HC, The (February 14, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1594201285
• ISBN-13: 978-1594201288
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #629,383 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

81 of 86 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The ultimate go-to guy - "Sergio" February 18, 2008

By Stephen Balbach

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

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.

45 of 53 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant and important -- must read February 14, 2008

By kjkstar

Format:Hardcover

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.

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent book. Good read on how the UN works and doesn't work March 25, 2008

By Michael Kendellen

Format:Hardcover

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.