Ralph Bunche An American Odyssey

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W. W. Norton & Company, Oct 6, 1998 - Biography & Autobiography - 496 pages
A superb narrative biography of the international diplomat and racial pioneer—the basis for the acclaimed four-part PBS TV series.

Ralph Bunche was instrumental — sometimes at great personal risk — in finding peaceful solutions to incendiary conflicts around the world, while at the same time he was never far from the realities of racial prejudice. Bunche rose from modest circumstances to become the foremost international mediator and peacekeeper of his time, winner of the 1950 Nobel Peace Prize and key drafter of the United Nations charter. Drawing on Bunche's personal papers and on his many years as Bunche's colleague at the UN, Brian Urquhart's elegant biography delineates a man with a zest for life as well as unsurpassed integrity of purpose. "Brian Urquhart brings [Bunche] back to life with a splendid biography. . . . Bunche emerges here as one of the major American diplomatic figures of this century and one of the towering leaders in African American history."—Arnold Rampersad, Princeton University  At once a splendid biography of a very brave and remarkable American, a vivid account of the struggle for racial justice, and an indispensable introduction to the dilemmas of international peacekeeping."—Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.
 

Contents

Preface
11
Prologue
21
Beginnings
23
UCLA Harvard and Howard
37
Howard and Beyond
49
England 1937
64
Africa and Asia
72
An American Dilemma
81
The Loyalty Question
243
Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy
257
Suez and the First Peacekeeping Force
264
Lebanon 1958 and the Middle East
291
The Congo
299
The Loss of Hammarskjöld
336
U Thant and the End of the Katanga Secession
348
Yemen
361

Prelude to War
92
World War II Washington and the OSS
101
The Road to San Francisco
111
Building the United Nations
125
Palestine
139
With the Mediator in Palestine
153
The Acting Mediator in Paris
186
Armistice Talks in RhodesEgypt and Israel
199
Armistice TalksJordan and Israel
213
The End of the Mediation and the Nobel Prize
221
Anticlimax
233
Cyprus and Kashmir
368
Vietnam
380
A Darkening Glass
393
The SixDay War
400
Winding Down
417
Bahrain
426
Civil Rights and Race in the United States
430
Ending
454
Notes
459
Index
477
Copyright

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About the author (1998)

Sir Brian Urquhart succeeded Ralph Bunche as United Nations Undersecretary General for Special Political Affairs. He is Scholar in Residence at the Ford Foundation and author of A Life in Peace and War, also a Norton paperback.

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