This was Kofi Annan’s reaction when his handpicked envoy to post-invasion Iraq, Sergio Vieira de Mello, was killed. The August 19, 2003 suicide attack on the UN compound in Baghdad – the first of its scale in Iraq – would mark a turning point in both the course of the Iraq war and the future of UN neutrality. Symbolically, the explosion that took the life of one of the UN’s greatest minds – a Brazilian who spent his career on the front lines of United Nations work – struck irreparable damage to the organization he devoted his life to upholding. 

In Chasing the Flame: Sergio Vieira de Mello and the Fight to Save the World, Harvard scholar and Obama advisor Samantha Power tells Sergio’s story. A philosopher of French training, Sergio rejected the armchair thinking of his peers, instead choosing to apply his ideals in the field: Lebanon, Mozambique, Cambodia, Rwanda, Sudan, Afghanistan. “His resume looked like a survey of international conflict,” writes one reviewer. By the 1990s, Sergio’s record for resourceful and effective leadership earned him tasks that would define the United Nations to the world: he represented the UN alongside NATO forces in Bosnia, alongside US forces in Iraq, and ran transitional UN authorities in both Kosovo and East Timor.

Power’s book is heavy in anecdote, telling as much about Sergio’s personal life and relationships as about his work. Yet these details, cumbersome for this Washington Post reviewer, only add to the book’s success: to portray recent UN history through the subjective experience and restless opinions of the man at the centre of so much.

Although generally favourable, Power’s biography is not adulatory. She recounts as many mistakes as successes. For all of Sergio’s admirers, there are equally fervent critics. But whatever anyone says, the actions and decisions taken by Sergio Vieira de Mello shaped the work done by the UN and the way it is perceived. This book offers personal insight into how one critical-thinking humanitarian grappled with the challenges of our time.

What will be the role of the United Nations in twenty-first century conflicts? How do we reconcile humanitarianism with political pragmatism? Can UN neutrality sometimes aggravate power inequalities? What is the relationship between security and human rights, between peace and justice?

Throughout the book, we follow Sergio confronting these questions in the field, then reflecting on them with friends and colleagues. In the epilogue, Power sifts through Sergio’s experience and addresses these questions coherently and constructively. Here, Power captures what I most admired about the man: “While many have responded to today’s divisions and insecurities with ideology, Vieira de Mello’s life steers us away from one-size-fits-all doctrine to a principled, flexible pragmatism that can adapt to meet diffuse and unpredictable challenges.”

Unlike Power’s review of Sergio’s life, my review of her book is adulatory. I eagerly consumed the details of the story, looked up many of the well-sourced references, and found myself reflecting on the book while following the news – the ICC indictment of Bashir, the handling of ex-Ba’athist soldiers in Iraq, the effect of elections in Zimbabwe – wondering, “what would Sergio do?” Chasing the Flame offers a rare combination of human interest and deep intellectual questioning. A great summer read for internationally minded folks like myself, and most probably you, too.

Now that I’ve finished the book, I wonder, what effect is Power having on the foreign policy of her boss?