Customer Reviews

United Nations for Beginners (For Beginners S.)

5 star:		(4)
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3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

In addition to teaching me new things, "For Beginners" books provide me with sheer reading pleasure, and this book is no exception. Before reading this book I often heard about the United Nations in the news, had some vague conception about what it is and the way it works, but never really understood the scope of its operations, or exactly how it works and why. This book revealed all this to me, and much more. From it, I learned about the history of the UN, it's charter, it's member organizations, the World Bank and IMF, peacekeeping missions, the World Court, UN personalities, ...! The author does a tremendously good job explaining all these things, without making our heads reel from the sheer amount of information. This book contains slightly fewer illustrations that the typical "For Beginner's" book, and is crammed full of text passages, but still is highly readable and humorous. Truly enjoyable!

Those of you who enjoyed this book will find a perfect complement in "Arabs and Israel for Beginners", by Ron David, a book that addresses what "The UN for Beginners" considers to be the greatest failure of the UN. I strongly recommend you buy both at the same time.

Williams' romp through the U.N. will make those knowledgeable of the U.N. smile, but therein lies the problem with the book. It is so skimpy on explaination, in fact disjointed in places, that it takes a familiarity with the U.N. to fill in the gaps.The book may indeed be misnamed. As an example of the book's disjointed and even confusing presentation is Williams' explanation of the World Court. No mention is made of its structure or its function. Instead, Williams talks about America's withdrawl from the ICJ without telling us why this happened. His subsequent example of a 1992 Security Council meeting makes no sense and one would have to be familiar with the events himself to make the connections. I think that before one can appreciate the details of examples one needs a little explaination of the ICJ's consent and cumpulsory jurisdictions and the ICJ statute which the Court is based on. Williams' explanations of the General Assembly and the Security Council are straightforward and clear, and here the examples and stories support his general points. One looking for a book on the basic workings of the U.N. would do better looking elsewhere.

In addition to teaching me new things, "For Beginners" books provide me with sheer reading pleasure, and this book is no exception. Before reading this book I often heard about the United Nations in the news, had some vague conception about what it is and the way it works, but never really understood the scope of its operations, or exactly how it works and why. This book revealed all this to me, and much more. From it, I learned about the history of the UN, it's charter, it's member organizations, the World Bank and IMF, peacekeeping missions, the World Court, UN personalities, and it's greatest failure: Palestine! The author does a tremendously good job explaining all these things, without making our heads reel from the sheer amount of information. This book contains slightly fewer illustrations that the typical "For Beginner's" book, and is crammed full of text passages, but still is highly readable and humorous. Truly enjoyable!

Those of you who enjoyed this book will find a perfect complement in "Arabs and Israel for Beginners", by Ron David, a book that addresses what "The UN for Beginners" considers to be the greatest failure of the UN. I strongly recommend you buy both at the same time.

Teenagers may find this an engaging introduction to an otherwise dry, bureaucratic organization; face it, its hard to 'sex up' the UN. Its lack of substantive advice on how to reform the UN may leave them despondent and apathetic however. Given the gravity of the subject matter the wry wit and sarcasm of the author failed to entertain me. And while he succeeded in presenting the UN as the punching bag and scapegoat of the superpowers, he failed, due mainly to the constraints of the 'Beginners' format, to sufficiently forward discussion of what the UN and its member organizations due well. There are also several gross editorial errors that could be corrected, and, given the last few years, an update is sorely needed. If you're using this for a class, do make sure to team it with one of the more in depth treatments of the UN available through Amazon.

This book details the inner workings of the United Nations from an insider's perspective. I learned a lot, and I had thought I knew enough about the UN.

The UN is usually boring, and most of the books about it are too. But this really brings it to live despite being nine years old. I hope they return and reissue it to bring it up to date with the Iraq War. Would love to see what they make of the last few crazy years!

I agree with unambiguo's assessment of this book, although I think unambiguo might have graded it a little harshly. If you are even somewhat knowledgable about the UN, you will find errors of ommission or oversimplification in this book. As a result, I wouldn't recommend it for someone who is really interested in learning about the UN. However, for someone who is familiar with the UN, I found the book pretty humorous. I would suggest an alternative title of this book be, "The Lighter Side of the UN," because I am afraid a beginner reading this book to really learn about the UN might be misled.