Peacemaker is the biography of U Thant, the forgotten UN Secretary-General who built and outlived the UN’s moral authority

T he United Nations is today an object of derision. Yet, one of its key architects, the incomparable Burmese statesman U Thant —Secretary-General from 1961 to 1971 — has been largely airbrushed out of history. Thant Myint-U’s brilliant, riveting and historically well-judged biography of his grandfather is a double act of recovery. It restores to view a college dropout and Burmese schoolteacher who became a colossus among international diplomats, navigating every major crisis from Congo to Cuba and Vietnam to Gaza.

The book’s power lies in how contemporary the crises Thant managed now feel — the forgotten UN mediation in the India-Pakistan war of 1965, the deep historical roots of Gaza and the crisis of the UN itself. It is also a tribute to an ideal of global politics. For all its impote