”It is hard to read this account and remain indifferent”.

Professor Trevor Taylor
International Affairs

”Melvern has written a moving and highly original work of lasting value.... a compelling narrative account...(this) massively detailed and interview based study is clearly the product of many years of scholarship.

Mark Imber
Millennium

The Ultimate Crime. Who Betrayed the UN and Why.

The Ultimate Crime provides a great deal of new information about the UN, describing successes and failures since its creation. The book gives a concise history of UN peacekeeping and describes in detail the tragic missions in Somalia, former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. It reveals and challenges the secrecy of the UN Security Council, describing how “UN policy” is devised in secret and informal session, often to disastrous effect, and away from press and public scrutiny.

The book exposes weaknesses in the UN system, and challenges the failure to reform the procedures for command and control of peacekeepers in the field. The book gives a comprehensive account of the anti-UN campaign waged continuously in the United States since the early fifties, beginning with the purging of radical UN staff and the activities of the FBI in the Secretariat building in New York.  
 
The book is the result of eight years research and with much of that time spent at the UN Secretariat in New York including at the UN archives, a remarkable and precious resource for those who want to study the history of international cooperation.

“The founders believed that UN success depended on public support, that enlightened public opinion was the key. The better informed about the UN’s aims and the realities with which it had to cope, the more likely the UN to succeed.”

Extract from a speech given by Linda Melvern in the House of Commons, Monday September 13, 2004

Reviews

...the 1990’s has seen something of proliferation of books on the UN. Linda Melvern’s book deserves a place on or very near the top of the pile.... this is a hidden history of the UN, indeed of the post©1945 world which will be of value to academics and the general reader. It is a major work of fact and argument which deserves considerable attention from those wanting to know how the UN worked during its first 50 years”.

Mark Imber
Millennium

Too little attention has been paid to this important book since its publication, despite strong recommendations from those in international politics. The book is an all too accurate view of the United Nations and is particularly notable for the new information which it contains. Facts rather than explanations or intions give the its weight and force. The book is sober and careful. keep reading...

Granville Fletcher
Sage Journals Online