Chasing the Flame; Sergio Vieira de Mello and the Fight to Save the World

London: Allen Lane, 2008. First U.K. Edition, First Printing. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. Walter Chin (Author photograph). xvi, 622, [2] pages. Illustrations. Chronology. Notes. List of Interviews. Index. Inscribed by the author on the title page. Inscription reads For Ashok, with hope. Samantha Power. Samantha Jane Power (born September 21, 1970) is an Irish-American academic, diplomat and government official who is currently serving as the Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development. She previously served as the 28th United States Ambassador to the United Nations from 2013 to 2017. Power began her career as a war correspondent covering the Yugoslav Wars before embarking on an academic career. Power joined the Obama State Department transition team in November 2008. She served as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Multilateral Affairs and Human Rights on the National Security Council from January 2009 to February 2013. In 2012, Obama chose her to chair the Atrocities Prevention Board. As U.N. ambassador, Power's office focused on such issues as United Nations reform, women's rights, religious freedom and religious minorities, refugees, human trafficking, human rights, and democracy, including in the Middle East and North Africa, Sudan, and Myanmar. She is considered to have been a key figure in the Obama administration in persuading the president to intervene militarily in Libya. She won a Pulitzer Prize in 2003 for her book A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide, a study of the U.S. foreign policy response to genocide. She has also been awarded the 2015 Barnard Medal of Distinction and the 2016 Henry A. Kissinger Prize. Sérgio Vieira de Mello (15 March 1948 - 19 August 2003) was a Brazilian United Nations diplomat who worked on several UN humanitarian and political programs for over 34 years. The Government of Brazil posthumously awarded the Sergio Vieira de Mello Medal to honor his legacy in promoting sustainable peace, international security and better living conditions for individuals in situations of armed conflict, challenges to which Sérgio Vieira de Mello had dedicated his life and career. He was killed in the Canal Hotel bombing in Iraq along with 20 other members of his staff on 19 August 2003 while working as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and United Nations Special Representative for Iraq. Before his death, he was considered a likely candidate for UN Secretary-General. Derived from a Kirkus review: Biography of the handsome Brazilian intellectual who served as the UN's top troubleshooter from East Timor and Bosnia to Iraq, where he died in a terrorist car bombing. Pulitzer Prize-winner Power draws on more than 400 interviews to offer this detailed portrait of charismatic Sergio Vieira de Mello (1948-2003), whom she first met in 1994 while working as a young reporter. A diplomat's son, Sergio earned a doctorate in philosophy at the Sorbonne and took part in the Paris student revolt in May 1968. He joined the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees in 1969 and remained with the organization until his death. Writing with a keen understanding of international affairs, Power traces each step of Sergio's career: early humanitarian postings in Sudan, Mozambique and Peru; his initial encounter with terrorism in 1981 as a UN political advisor in Lebanon; and later work in Hong Kong and Cambodia that made his reputation as a pragmatic negotiator. Power describes a man who was always learning, reaching out to everyone from taxi drivers to thugs in the belief that to resolve problems all must be heard. An elegant charmer in his starched shirts and tailored suits, Sergio was a ladies' man who frequently bedded colleagues and a deeply loyal UN official who neglected his wife and two children. Power shows how his winning ways, knowledge of Kantian philosophy and deep regard for the dignity of both people and nations made him a force for change. Her description of failed attempts to rescue Sergio from the rubble of the UN's quarters in Baghdad, where he was Secretary General Kofi Annan's special representative, is both riveting and heartbreaking. A well-rendered account of one of the UN's best in pursuit of "the flame of idealism that motivated many to strive to combat injustice and that inspired the vulnerable to believe that help would soon come.".