An Insider's Guide to the UN

Rating:
Summary: Finally, a no-nonsense guide!
Review: A very good book. Fasulo's guide boasts all the important details about the UN, but it is also refreshingly lively. Sometimes the author is opinionated, but she is clear when she is speaking from personal experience. It's also appropriate for the high school reader: I recommend this to all my model UN students.

Rating:
Summary: Informative but biased
Review: Fasulo's book is a great source of information for those who need an introduction to the United Nations' structure and main bodies. However, do not expect an unbiased account from the author, since it appears that the book was partially funded by the United Nations. Regardless, as a journalist who has been covering the UN for so long, Fasulo definitely has a clear agenda: to portray the UN as a valid and necessary institution. Any criticism is likely to be directed toward trivial aspects of the organization, such as the building it occupies or the miniscule offices reserved for journalists. Nothing that suggests a need for substantial structural reform within the UN. Fasulo goes out of her way to praise Kofi Annan and his Swedish wife. The author's devotion to the secretary general gets to be a little bit much and after a while one starts to wonder if it is a bigger office she is really after.

Rating:
Summary: Very Easy To Digest
Review: Fasulo's book is clear and complete, making a terribly complex topic like the United Nations very accessible to a lay reader like me.

The book boasts a wealth of information, including everything from clear descriptions of the UN's various bodies, to revealing accounts of the UN's impact in international history, to the actual days and times you can visit the New York headquarters on a tour.

Unlike the previous reviewer, who seems to know everything about international affairs, I found An Insider's Guide eye-opening and, more importantly, a very enjoyable read!

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Summary: The definitive guide to today's UN
Review: I thoroughly enjoyed "An Insider's Guide to the UN," which is a must-read for anyone trying to assess the role of the United Nations in today's world. This highly readable 2004 Yale University publication has quickly established itself as the definitive book for anyone wishing to understand the UN as well as US-UN relations. Longtime UN correspondent Linda Fasulo (NPR,NBC) has distilled insights gleaned from her years of covering the UN in this lively and concise volume, which is brimming with candid reflections by leading US and UN diplomats and officials on the key issues facing the international community. The book thus combines a comprehensive overview of the UN's basic role with a savvy analysis of pivotal issues on the UN's current agenda. The result is a wonderful book that is an ideal introduction for students and general readers while also offering much that would be of interest to experts as well. In short, this is a very user-friendly guide to the UN, peppered with keen insights,fascinating photos, charts and useful appendices.

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Summary: Puff piece on the corrupt UN? Payoff? Ted Turner?
Review: It appears that Accuracy In Media has a few questions about this book. Looks like amazingly corrupt Kofi Annan gets another free pass. Why are U.S. taxpayers being forced to fund this corrupt den of theives and murderers called the UN? Ted Turner is such a weasel. He now makes his living murdering buffaloes for his buffalo steak house. What a parasite.

Accuracy In Media press release below:

NBC Reporter Refuses to Disclose How Much She Received From Ted Turner

WASHINGTON -- A New York Sun report today indicates that Lisa Fasulo, NBC and MSNBC correspondent to the UN, has defended her work and denied a conflict of interest stemming from a grant she received from Ted Turner's United Nations Foundation to help pay for her book, An Insider's Guide to the UN. News of the grant was first reported by Accuracy in Media (AIM) Editor Cliff Kincaid.

AIM is calling on NBC News to reveal how much money Fasulo has taken from Ted Turner's UN Foundation. In a column released on Wednesday, Kincaid charged that the financial relationship may explain why she is so pro-UN in her 2004 book. Fasulo "would not say how much money she received from the United Nations Foundation, which Ted Turner created in 1997 with $1 billion of his fortune," The New York Sun has now reported in its follow-up story. Among other things, the book whitewashes UN chief Kofi Annan's role in the 1994 Rwanda genocide.

In email messages to Ms. Fasulo that were not answered, Kincaid asked her: "How much money did you accept from the UN Foundation, Better World Campaign, and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund?" These are entities that she acknowledges helped underwrite the book project in some manner. Kincaid also asked her: "In the part of your book on Kofi Annan and Rwanda, you ignore the genocide fax from Annan's office showing that he refused authorization for UN troops on the ground to prevent genocide. Why did you ignore that?"

Accuracy In Media (AIM) is a non-profit, grassroots citizens watchdog of the news media that critiques botched and bungled news stories and sets the record straight on important issues that have received slanted coverage.

To schedule an interview with AIM Editor Cliff Kincaid, contact Anne Tyrrell at [phone] or [e-mail]



Rating:
Summary: Very Easy To Digest
Review: Just read Linda Fasulo's book 'An Insider's Guide...' and loved it. I've been working with the UN fifteen years, and even I learned some things! Clear, concise and very easy to digest. Have paid the book the highest of all honors, and recommended it to my mother's book club! Bravo, Ms. Fasulo.

Rating:
Summary: huh?
Review: who is this womam? never heard of her.....Tom Brokaw recommends it?
has he even read it? anyone in TV knows Brokaw can't read....this book is boring....has no pictures.....at least it could have included vouchers for free tickets on the tour of UN headquarters.... I have one use for this book.....I will use the pages to line my parrot's cage