involvement in international conflicts through the United Nations, but also includes aspects of their backgrounds and follow events after they leave the UN. In the profiles Off avoids describing places and events but provides a chapter to "a Grapes of Wrath-style description of her two locales". The biographies compare and contrast the strategy and effect of each person's approach to their mission. One reviewer compared the profiles of Dallaire and MacKenzie to Suetonius's biographies of Athenian generals Nicias and Alcibiades. Suetonius portrayed Nicias as honourable, moderate, and effective but over-shadowed by the more vocal and polarizing Alcibiades. Likewise, Off portrayed Dallaire as the more honourable commander but over-shadowed by the more media savvy and callous MacKenzie. Off's focus on moral choices was called "a feminist approach" by several members of the Department of National Defence. In the Introduction, Off explains the animal metaphors. Roméo Dallaire is the 'lion' because he acted courageously with an appearance of control and confidence. Lewis MacKenzie compared to a 'fox' because while he made a brave and dramatic defense of the airport, and was trusted by outside observers, his actions in recommending against intervention were based on the cunning logic that all sides were, at least, partly responsible for the conflict. Louise Arbour is portrayed as the 'eagle' for her pursuit of justice and her use of surprise SWAT-like arrests. Themes Reviewers identified two themes: morality and the UN effectiveness. Off characterized Dallaire and Arbour as morally correct and MacKenzie morally wrong. In Rwanda, Dallaire lobbied the UN to intervene to stop the genocide. In Yugoslavia, MacKenzie is accused of being an apologist for the Serbs. In an interview Off admitted that she would prefer MacKenzie to be her son's commander but would want Dallaire if her people were being attacked because one puts his soldiers before the mission and the other the mission before the soldiers. She identifies the UN as the book's villain and criticizes the UN's practise of moral equivalency that treats both sides equally even though one side is clearly dominant and brutally oppressive. It results in the requirement of its personnel to remain neutral but Off questions how a peacekeeper can remain neutral while watching people being killed. The book treats this as a reality of international relations, which places precedence on state sovereignty over human rights, and a factor in making the UN slow, ineffectual, and inappropriately bureaucratic. She