I wish to thank my editors, Ruth Baldwin and Carl Bromley, and my agents, Jennifer Gates and Mary Beth Chappell, whose advice and direction helped guide this project to completion. I would also like to thank Sam Shepard, whose advice helped me re-pitch the project after it had fallen between the cracks as a first draft. His simple advice ("Just tell people the story as you just told it to me") breathed new life into the project. A number of talented friends and colleagues also provided valuable feedback, advice, or encouragement at critical stages in my writer’s journey. They include Audun Huslid, Jad Mouawad, Hedi Kim, Daniel Cruise, Liz Bowyer, Robert Whitcomb, Terry Collymore, Celeste Katz, David Guç, Web Stone, Robert McKee, Tamara Chalabi, Keith Fleming, Amir Afkhami, Chris Chappell, Megan Kingery, Joanne Dickow, Patrick Arfi, Jacques Baudouin, Denis Poncet, Hesi Carmel, Ami Horowitz, Matt Groff, Tanaz Esheghian, Inna Khavinson, Douglas Rogers, Paul Rothenberg, Shannon Godwin, Scott Anderson, Keith Flemming, and Judy Goldstein.
Afsane Bassir Pour, of Le Monde, and Richard Roth, of CNN, offered me my first opportunities to cover the United Nations for the media, when I was just out of college. One reason they considered me was that I had cofounded and edited The Brown Journal of World Affairs, at Brown University, thanks to the support offered by the Watson Institute and grants from Vartan Gregorian and Artemis Joukwosky. Together with my academic mentors, Terrence Hoppman, Jarat Chopra, Pierre Hassner, and Marie-Claude Smouts, they helped me develop a strong interest in world affairs, and the confidence necessary to think for myself.
I am grateful to the staff at The Writers’ Room, where most of this book was written, for offering a productive space in which to work in New York. My students at New York University’s Center for Global Affairs unwittingly helped me more than they can imagine with questions for which I am in their debt. I am most grateful to Alessandra Bastagli, Lindsay Fradkoff, and Katie Haigler for their work on this third edition of the book. Finally, I wish to thank the many UN staff whose dedication and competence may not be the focus of this tale, but whose example gave me hope that our world organization can in fact be held to higher standards.