This week finds me in the middle of both a production cycle and a terrible cold, so I do not have the time or capacity to write the essay I’d intended to write about Samantha Power’s excellent new book, Chasing the Flame: Sergio Vieira de Mello and the Fight to Save the World. I had planned, you see, to point out how it’s a very good guide to understanding some of the thought behind Barack Obama’s remarkable foreign-policy philosophy, of which Power was an influential architect, and I was going to discuss Spencer Ackerman’s fine piece on that philosophy. I was going to note how unfortunate it is that the book’s release has been overshadowed by the fallout from Power calling Hillary Clinton a monster, which isn’t to say that it’s okay to call people monsters, but that one should at least wait until one’s book tour is over before doing it. If, that is, you want to talk about your book on that tour rather than your public political statements.

But, for the aforementioned reasons, I cannot write that essay. So I will just say that Samantha Power’s new book is a tribute to an important man, and beyond that a tribute to the idea of possibility and optimism in the world today, which is a rare enough thing to merit mention. You should read it, and if you live in Ottawa or Toronto, you should go hear Power speak next week. She’ll be at the Ottawa on Sunday, April 13, at noon for a talk and interview with Lucy van Oldenbarnveld. And she’ll be appearing in Toronto at the Manulife Centre Indigo on Monday, April 14, at 7 p.m. for a talk and interview with Heather Reisman.

Tags: books

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Posted on Tuesday, April 8th, 2008 at 9:06 am. Follow comments through the RSS 2.0 feed. Comment or trackback.