Mazower, M: No Enchanted Palace

ideological prehistory, and in the process offers a corrective to previous, somewhat uncritical accounts of the UN's formation... This book is an illuminating contribution to the debate about the United Nations. -- Kirsten Sellars International Affairs Historian Mark Mazower takes a whack at the prevailing perception of the U.N.'s founding fathers as a band of farsighted idealists seeking to mold a truly universal institution out of the ruins of the World War II... Mazower examines the darker side of the U.N.'s creation, highlighting a handful of influential figures who participated in drafting the U.N. Charter. -- Colum Lynch Foreign Policy No Enchanted Palace is essentially an exercise in demystification, which aims to strip the UN of the halo of piety that surrounds it. But it is also a work of historical investigation, and Mazower brings to light many neglected details of the UN's formation and development. -- John Gray Harper's Magazine An important book and a good example of the way history can inform current debates. -- Bernard Porter History Today Opens some novel perspectives... Mazower offers a disturbing picture of the ambiguous ideological foundations of this great sacred cow of post-war international institutions. -- Sunil Khilnani Outlook India In No Enchanted Palace, his fascinating and revealing study of the intellectual origins of the United Nations, Mark Mazower, a British historian now teaching at Columbia University in New York, focuses on the ideas and ideologies that shaped the international body before and during its inception. -- Adam Lebor Jewish Chronicle Mazower is a historian of rare penetration who writes with a verve and sparkle seldom met in members of his profession. No Enchanted Palace is an original contribution to historical understanding which brilliantly charts the ideological origins of the United Nations. The book is a powerful blast against utopianism and unrealistic expectations. -- Vernon Bogdanor Spectator Well written and documented. Choice Mazower demonstrates that there is more than one side to the story of the creation of the UN, and does so in a highly readable style. This is a sophisticated work of intellectual history with implications for international institutional law... Mazower's work provides a solid and intellectually stimulating basis for trying to re-think this fundamental starting point. -- Jan Klabbers Global Law Books This work should interest not only political scientists and historians, but anyone who is concerned about the UN's fate. -- Pamela A. Jordan Canadian Journal of History Mazower's thesis serves to illuminate enduring questions and recent debates concerning the role of the UN... Perhaps most importantly, Mazower provides a sound case for dismissing those voices within contemporary accounts that call for the UN to return to its lofty origins. -- James Upcher Oxonian Review No Enchanted Palace adds greatly to our understanding of the UN's intellectual foundations. Survival This is a sophisticated work of intellectual history with implications for international institutional law. Mazower forces the discipline to rethink one of the premises on which the paradigmatic theory of functionalism rests... Mazower's work provides a solid and intellectually stimulating basis for trying to re-think this fundamental starting point. -- Jan Klabbers European Journal of International Law No Enchanted Palace is a model of the new international history. Forceful and engaged, it will likely provoke a wide range of readers... Short, readable, and challenging, No Enchanted Palace would make an ideal book for courses on internationalism, empire, global politics, and human rights. -- J. P. Daughton H-Net Reviews Mark Mazower is one of the most original and interesting historians at work on Europe's modern history. In this book, he turns his attention to the broader theme of world order, and to the various ways in which it was being reimagined at the moment when the United Nations was created in 1945. The result is a lucid, perceptive, and indispensable study. -- John Darwin American Historical Review