Description:
Thefascinating saga of how an underestimated diplomatic accord in 1975 changed
history in the next half-century: highlighting human rights and security in
Europe and leading to the creation of Human Rights Watch, one of the world's
leading NGOs.
Brief description:
Peter L.W.Osnos was born in Bombay (now Mumbai) India on
October 13, 1943. He arrived in Los Angeles by ship with his parents and
brother in February 1944. He was raised in New York and attended high school in
Connecticut, college at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachisetts and
graduate school at Columbia University., He worked as an assistant to the
journalist I.F.Stone and joined The Washington Post in 1966. At the Post,
Osnos served as a correspondent in Vietnam, the Soviet Union and London. He was
also the national and foreign editor. In 1984, Osnos joined Random House as a
senior editor and later associate publisher as well as publisher of the Times
Books imprint. In 1997, he founded PublicAffairs in partnership with the
Perseus Books Group and served as publisher and editor at large until 2020. He
was the founder of the Caravan Project on the development of digital and audio
publishing, author of a weekly media column called Platform which was hosted by
The Century Foundation and appeared on TheAtlantic.com and in 2020, launched
Platform Books LLC with his wife, Susan Sherer Osnos. The first book was
"An Especially Good View: Watching History Happen" released in May,
2021. It is Osnos' memoir, distributed by Two Rivers/Ingram. He is also
the editor of "George Soros: A Life in Full" (Platform Books/Harvard Business
Review Press, 2022). He is the father of two children, Evan Osnos and Katherine
Sanford, and grandfather of five. He and his wife now live in New
York City and Lakeside, Michigan.
Review Quotes: "It is now almost fifty years since major states and
nonprofit groups put human rights on the priority list for international debate
and action. Governments agreed to new norms and regulations including rigorous requirements
of accountability. Over the years, both public and private efforts based on the
Helsinki Accords and led by Human Rights Watch have given power and force to
those goals. This compelling and highly readable book tells the remarkable
story of that transformation." -James F.
Hoge, Jr., former editor of Foreign Affairs and former chairman of
Human Rights Watch