Assembly by Design: The United Nations and Its Global Interior by Olga Touloumi. University of Minnesota Press, 312 pp., $35.
On October 12, 1960, the austere chambers of the United Nations General Assembly witnessed an unprecedented disruption when Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev transformed footwear into political theater. Amid remarks by Philippine delegate Lorenzo Sumulong criticizing Soviet imperialism, Khrushchev—the revolutionary-turned-statesman who had survived Stalin’s purges to succeed him—allegedly removed his shoe and struck his desk repeatedly. The percussive protest was preserved only in disputed eyewitness accounts, and yet we have to imagine that the sharp staccato thuds reverberated through the suddenly hushed chamber like diplomatic gunfire. Khrushchev’s performance represented far more than a momentary breach of decorum; it exemplified the theatricalization of geopolitical discourse at a pivotal moment when nuclear superpowers competed through symbolic gestures calibrated for maximum impact. That we must aurally reconstr…