Powerhouse of Ideas: The United Nations Intellectual History Project: Book Review Article.

摘要

This is the concluding volume of the United Nations Intellectual History Project (UNIHP). In his Foreword to the book, former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan expressed his gratitude to the project’s directors ‘for their unstinting efforts to document how UN ideas have been among the world organization’s most important achievements. I am certain that the project will continue to inspire innovation and scholarship for many decades to come’ (p. xv). Over the past decade (1999-2009), the project has sought to provide a history of the ideas and concepts for human progress formed and launched at the UN, which hitherto had been lacking. Directed by Louis Emmerij, Richard Jolly and Thomas Weiss, all with long and distinguished academic and UN careers, whom Kofi Annan described as ‘independent thinkers who have an inside knowledge but who write in their personal and professional capacities’, it was also guided by an ‘International Advisory Council’ of 11 distinguished authorities, and financed by funds from eight governments and six foundations.