Kofi Annan was the seventh Secretary-General of the United Nations, from 1997 to 2006, and was the first to emerge from the ranks of United Nations staff. In 2001 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace.

Certain international crises of recent years deteriorated badly and sometimes resulted in terrible massacres, while others were successfully resolved. For what reasons? How can we take steps toward better world governance? At a time when the international community has failed to make headway on the Syrian crisis, this timely book offers a detailed, candid review of its recent successes and failures.
At the United Nations Kofi Annan was at the centre of the great geopolitical events of our time. In this memoir, he shares personal reminiscences and his unique vision and experience of world diplomacy, from the last days of the Cold War to the present. Along the way, he evokes many political leaders and rulers of our time, from Tony Blair to George W. Bush, from Yasser Arafat to Yitzhak Rabin, from Saddam Hussein to Nelson Mandela.
With eloquence and candour, Kofi Annan recounts the high and low points of his United Nations career, from the crises in Kosovo and Lebanon to the war in Iraq. He explains in detail the difficulties the U.N. faces and the failures of world governance, as well as the brutal conflicts of Somalia, Rwanda and Bosnia, the unending violence in the Middle East, the ravages caused by AIDS and the endemic poverty of the continent of his birth.

• The great game of world diplomacy, from the end of the Cold War to today.
• Major world events and recent challenges, seen from the United Nations’ perspective.
• ‘Kofi Annan is a great global leader of our time,’ Amartya Sen.