Book Review

摘要

Books about the UN, like the politicians who support it, evidently do better when they make little outward mention of that international organisation. While the cover of most editions of this nine-chapter book is adorned with UN blue and those initials are highlighted in the 'unfinished' of the title, the United Nations is mentioned nowhere explicitly until a chapter or two in. This is no criticism: the UN is a flawed body that everyone knows but few understand, and smuggling it onto people's reading lists may be one of the few ways to address that. However, this book on the current global outlook, despite its lofty title, shines more through its anecdotes and asides than the rigorous and structured policy prescriptions readers might expect. In The Unfinished Global Revolution, former head of the UN Development Programme (UNDP), former deputy secretary-general to Kofi Annan and eyewitness to numerous pivotal international events, Mark Malloch-Brown, relates his ideas of practical solutions to international problems, particularly through thoughtful international governance. With a career that has seen him at the UN during the Cambodian refugee crisis, the Iraq war controversy and much in between; in New York on 9/11 and London on 7/7; in the Philippines, Peru and Russia during their democratic transitions; and at the World Bank during the Asian financial crises, the author is certainly well-placed to relate sage observations on the state of the world.