In this thoughtful, balanced biography, former

Los Angeles Times foreign and diplomatic correspondent Stanley Meisler traces Kofi Annan s unconventional rise from optimistic student to striving personnel and budget specialist in the United Nations bureaucracy to full-time manager of the world s crises. The book presents a unique portrait of this widely admired leader, with Annan s own view of events tempered and augmented by those of his allies and opponents, defenders and detractors.