Customer Reviews

International Territory: The United Nations, 1945-95

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What a strange book! It is some kind of souvenir or milestone-marker of the UN at its half-centenary date in 1995. It belongs basically in the same category as the coffee-mugs, tiepins, ballpoint pens, lapel badges, ashtrays, caps, brochures, 45rpm LP's and for aught I know underwear that seared the recollection of this historic date into the memory of the world's aspiring multitudes, or at least those of them who had enough spare time and unemployed cash. However it is still apparently selling from new, so one or two words by way of a review or notice may be helpful to someone.

No account is taken in what follows here of the price, because I have no idea how that may influence anyone else. I myself paid pennies for it off a second-hand shelf out of curiosity and I cannot even imagine buying it in any other circumstances. For all that, it genuinely is of interest in this year of the Lord 2007. It is half an essay by Christopher Hitchens and half photographs by Adam Bartos. The photos are obviously highly professional. They record only the buildings of the UN in New York, from within and externally, and human presence is evinced only in the form of two pairs of clothed legs, those male these feminine, in what is apparently a study of the gymnasium, not that one could have told that. For Bartos these images mind him of time and place (like Housman's travellers nearing Hell Gate): for Hitchens they were the inspiration for his musings: for William Eggleston on the back cover they'... look cold and formal. But only at first. Actually they are full of meaning'. For me they are good professional photos. You could be playing a practical joke and tell me any of that lot about meaning and inspiration and I would not know what to believe.

Hitchens is always thoughtful and independent-minded. On this occasion he recognises the unseemliness of any provocative or controversialist tone. His musings may be a little rambling, but on a second reading I decided that that was no bad thing. He takes three chapters. The first is about the early decisions on location and architecture. These issues were political enough in all conscience, but he reserves his explicitly political analysis for the second, saying what are actually some very interesting things but pulling his rhetorical punches much as if he were in church. The last chapter is his predictions, but as these were predictions in 1995 or thereabouts I shall not assess them in 2007 as predictions. Indeed I shall treat myself to a copout and not assess them at all.

It would all have made a good article in the New Yorker or National Geographic. It comes here expensively printed, in hard binding and in `landscape' (as opposed to `portrait') layout so that it will protrude on many bookshelves, as on the one I bought it from which is how I came to notice it. Perhaps all this is as you like it. If so it's available at various prices.