Dunant's Dream by Caroline Moorehead
The International Red Cross was the inspiration - the dream - of Henri Dunant, a 31 year old Swiss businessman appalled by the butchery and lack of medical care for injured soldiers during the battle of Solferino in 1859. He set out to create an international organization which was not only to alter, irrevocably, the fate of all those wounded in every war, but which moved rapidly into international humanitarian law, refugee work, prison conditions and the tracking of people parted by warfare. Today the Red Cross has 137 national societies and 250 million members. Yet it remains an inscrutable institution - very much the same animal today as in the 1870s - governed by the Swiss alone. Caroline Moorehead has been granted unrestricted access to the extensive archives in Geneva, closed for over 100 years. They provide a study of the politics of conflict. This account traces the Red Cross's origins.
'A balanced, moving and utterly absorbing account of how high the human spirit can soar and the depths to which it can sink' AMANDA FOREMAN, Independent;'A humane and remarkable book' MICHAEL BURLEIGH, Independent on Sunday;'This engrossing history frequently reads like a superb historical novel... delightful and unexpected.' BRIAN PHILLIPS, Literary Review
Caroline Moorehead is a biographer, book reviewer, writer and broadcaster on human rights. She worked at The Times, specialising in profiles and interviews, before joining the Independent in 1989 to write a weekly column on human rights -- which was subsequently turned into a television series for the BBC, which she continues to write and co-produce. She is associate producer of a TV series on the Red Cross which will be presented by John Simpson and will accompany this book. She lives in London.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780006388838 |
| ISBN 10 | 0006388833 |
| Title | Dunant's Dream |
| Author | Caroline Moorehead |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding type | Paperback |
| Publisher | HarperCollins Publishers |
| Year published | 1999-07-19 |
| Number of pages | 812 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |