In the summer of 1859, after the battle of Solferino in northern Italy, a young Swiss entrepreneur named Henri Dunant was so sickened by seeing the wounded, dead, and maimed that he determined to found an international humanitarian organization to regulate the conduct of warfare and provide frontline medical care for combat casualties.

Within five years Dunant and four other prosperous Swiss citizens had established the International Committee for Relief to the Wounded, had drafted the first Geneva Convention, by which sixteen states pledged themselves to the principle of neutrality for medical personnel in the field, and, reversing the colors of the Swiss flag, had taken as its badge a red cross on a field of white.

The Red Cross today comprises 137 national societies and 250 million members. The International Committee that governs it, however, has changed little since the 1870s. It remains a private, independent, discreet board, now of twenty-five Swiss citizens, accountable to no body beyond itself.

While the International Committee has operated staunchly, and with sometimes necessary secrecy, on its self-prescribed principles throughout the twentieth century, the ambiguity of its relation to such oppressive political regimes as Stalin's Soviet Union or Hitler's Germany has not escaped criticism. Nor does it escape author Caroline Moorehead's scrutiny in this comprehensive, balanced history of the organization that has sought to translate a humanitarian vision into a reality.