Peacemaker: U Thant, the United Nations and the Forgotten History of the 1960s

'Essential reading for anyone interested in the origins and possibilities of our current global crisis' Rory Stewart, author of Politics on the Edge 'Thant Myint-U is the greatest living historian of Burma' William Dalrymple

In December 1971, after having stepped down as the United Nations' longest-serving Secretary-General, U Thant was ranked the sixth 'most admired man' in America, so why he is largely forgotten today?

In Peacemaker, Thant Myint-U traces his grandfather's rise from schoolteacher in a small Burmese backwater in 1947 to celebrity at the centre of global of politics just two decades later. He reveals U Thant's integral yet forgotten roles in some of the twentieth centuries' most critical crises - from battling white supremacist mercenaries in the Congo and mediating a peaceful end to the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 to ensuring the ceasefire held after the 1967 Six-Day War - and details the shifting world order that U Thant affected.

Despite U Thant's popularity as a peacemaker, his unrelenting efforts to end the fighting in Vietnam - on terms very different from those desired by Lyndon Johnson's White House - made him an enemy of many in the American national security establishment, sowing the seeds of his downfall.

At once rigorous and hugely entertaining, Peacemaker is an intimate biography that not only attests to the power of hope, peace and individual actions in times of uncertainty, but also chronicles a golden age of diplomacy: a time when people believed that it was only by coming together that we could tackle the biggest threats posing humanity.

© 2025 Atlantic Books (Ebook): 9781838958961

Release date

Ebook: September 4, 2025