This book has great interviews taken from the Medjugorje visionaries. The six seers, who see or saw the Mother of God daily, are interviewed in this awe inspiring book. They tell their story simply and make responding to God's desires more easy to achieve. They are full of knowledge from heaven that we simply would not know. They do. They have seen the future and what lies ahead for those who do not turn to God. They tell us what we must do now. They speak of the importance of prayer, of a Sacramental life, of a family that prays together. This book is a "must read" for anyone interested in Medjugorje and their future. Beware of some of the theology in the introductory and concluding chapters, they are the opinion of the author-not the Medjugorje visonaries. This book is a collection of interviews. Read them and understand the greatness of those who give their lives over to Mary in order to live heaven on earth.

I really can't recommend this book enough for anyone interested in the Blessed Virgin, in Marian Apparitions, or in Medjugorje. If you are interested in all three, I'd consider this book a must-have. The woman who wrote the book interviewed not only all of the visionaries (the ones who see the Blessed Virgin Mary and have since 1981 !) but also the two child 'locutionaries' as well. Each chapter of interviews speaks of how it began for each person and 'where they are today' as far as which ones still receive a daily apparition and which have a yearly one now, and who has all ten secrets and who is yet to receive all ten (now, most have ten and some have nine). It explains the phenomena of Medjugorje very well. There are also photographs to go along with all the book talks about. I did not know there were child locutionaries (they hear the BVM talking to them, and I believe this because for one thing, the things those two children say are amazingly wise beyond their years) until I read this book.

The interviewer asks spiritual questions of each subject and the answers will have your mouth dropping open. I can't seem to hold onto this book; every once in a while I will buy a new copy, only to give it away again to someone I feel will be amazed by it too -- and they are. The interview subjects discuss heaven, hell, purgatory, God's peace, the visions, etc.etc. It's an amazing book, and will leave you feeling very good after reading it. I found it inspiring. [....] Right now it's my favorite book about Medjugorje.

I have read Visions Of The Children many times over and over. After having been to Medjugorje twice I feel Jan Connell's book is probably the book which will make you feel as if you are already there in Medjugorje. I have read many books on Medjugorje. This one is my favorite because it is the most detailed about the six visionaries and their testimonies and encounters with Our Lady in Medjugorje.This book goes beyond all of the manifestations of Medjugorje like the rosaries turning gold, the sun spinning, etc- and focuses on the true messages of Our Lady and which she has been stating for the last almost 21 years. Do read this book and let it touch you as it has us those of us that have been blessed to visit Medjugorje ourselves and for those that havent this will take you on a journey there in your heart. A beautiful and inpisring book!

>>Comrades, Avenge Us<< is one of the best books of the espionage/military genre I have read in many years. Author Stephen G. Esrati addresses an intelligent lay readership and uses effective language. The book is enjoyable, readable, and
thought- provoking. I cannot figure out why a major publisher like Random House or Dell has not jumped at the chance to offer him a contract. His book compares favorably with historical novels by Hans Hellmut Kirst, a German veteran of the Second World War who made a career of writing stories about the German Army and the Nazis, in part derived from personal experience. In fact, >>Comrades<< is better than several of Kirst's later books, like >>Brothers in Arms<< and >>Nights of the Long Knives.<<

The story of a failed Office of Strategic Services mission to Yugoslavia and a twenty-year search for justice, >>Comrades<< is a memorial to Anglo-American prisoners of war who were imprisoned in Adolf Hitler's concentration camps. Mauthausen, Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen, and Auschwitz each held small numbers of "ex-prisoners of war," often in retaliation for escape attempts. In league with former Yugoslav and Italian resisters, Majors John Bowles and William Macnaughton hunt for German and Croatian war criminals who inflicted unspeakable tortures upon themselves and murdered their OSS Team (URBAN).

The author's personal experience give certain episodes in the novel a gritty realism. Born in Berlin, Esrati emigrated to Palestine with his immediate family right after Hitler's appointment as Reich Chancellor in 1933. From Palestine, his family emigrated to the United States in 1937, and Esrati served in the US Army just after the war. A one-time member of the Revisionist-Zionist organization, Irgun, which fought for Israeli independence, and a veteran of US Special Forces, his experience with clandestine activities and the idiosyncracies of the US Army during the Eisenhower Era make the story come alive. Since the publication of >>Comrades,<< Esrati has published a second novel which draws upon his personal experiences, >>The Tenth Prayer: A Novel of Israel<< (2000).

An excellent first offering, >>Comrades<< nevertheless contains several flaws. In Major John Bowles, the author succumbed to the temptation to create a larger-than-life protagonist, as is often the case in espionage novels. At times, it is difficult to imagine Bowles, a polymath whose experiences would fill three lifetimes: a dancer in the Andy Hardy movies, a runner in the Boston Marathon, and a member of the Special Forces, all the while leading the life of a Nazi hunter.

Another flaw concerns the fictional representation of Nazi atrocities. If >>Comrades<< commemorates Anglo-American victims of Nazi concentration camps, why then focus upon the OSS, whose members engaged in espionage and sabotage, and therefore had little reason to expect even the (albeit inadequate) protection granted to POWs under the Geneva Convention of 1929? Historical novels often focus upon the exceptional, and Esrati should be given some leeway for artistic license in this case. But OSS captives rarely survived the war; the Germans usually executed them as spies and saboteurs. An important exception was US Navy Commander Jack Taylor, who led a failed OSS mission in Northern Italy and was confined to Mauthausen until US liberation.

Esrati should be commended for discussing in detail the mass murder of American POWs at Malmedy during the "Battle of the Bulge," and for roundly condemning Senator Joseph McCarthy's subsequent misrepresentation of treatment accorded to suspected war criminals in US custody, but he errs in the assertion that there were former American POWs in Dora-Mittelbau. While future Saturn V Program director Arthur Rudolph oversaw V-2 guided missile production at Mittelwerk (central work), and allegedly witnessed in person in November 1944 a mass hanging from a gantry in that cavernous complex, the victims were camp resisters, not US POWs. Setting aside these criticisms, >>Comrades<< makes a fitting memorial to Nazi Germany's forgotten victims.

I found this a real page-turner, and I stayed up much too late to finish it. I loaned my copy to a friend who is a World War II vet, and her comment was "more fact than fiction." She went on to say that this was one of the best-informed books about World War II that she had ever read. Mr. Esrati obviously knows his subject very well to earn that kind of praise from someone who was there. He is also able to create believable characters and make the reader really care about them. Buy it!

I read Stephan's Book in record time. Kudos to Mr. Esrati for a "great" read.It was one of those "rare books" that one wants to slowdown when one nears the end. Well all readers of this genre know why. There are few authors who can carry the reader and accurate history in their narrative. Stephan's technique of having his characters narrate "mini-history lessons" on such a complex topic was a "sui-generis" stylistic accomplishment.

I think this book details why politicians and large political / military organizations like NATO have such a difficulty in successfully performing low level military conflicts like the peacekeeping effort in the Yugoslavia region. This book details by representing the destruction and ongoing fighting, just how ineffective the peacekeeping process was at the start due to a half-hearted commitment by the political leaders. The military in the conventional sense, is not a police force or social working group, the purpose of the military is to destroy the enemy. When asking this force to go about a job they are not designed for with one hand tied behind their back and the constant fear of every decision being second-guessed, is there any surprise that the effort did not work for some time.

I think this book provides one with a good start to understanding the civil war in Kosovo. I think one would need more details to have a better understanding of what will need to take place for this area to live in peace. A good follow up would be to read Waging Modern War by Wesley Clark.

Well,first of all I must admit that I'm halfway the book now but I'm already able to recommend this book. I had a library copy at home when I bought this book and to be honest I was sorry I did that because I could read the book for free BUT in the very first pages thanks to the writing of Mr.Campbell I have congratulated this book for getting a place in the bookshelf of mine called "Only the best books I've ever read in my life". This book is so good as it tells things as they were.Mr.Campbell tells the truth and doesnt sympathise anybody except the justice. His writing is amazing and you wouldn't be surprise when you get transfered so easily into a strange world full of mysteries. I try to buy every single book about my country and I have plenty of those but "The Road to Kosovo" is the best one. I'll finish by saying -Even if you read 100 books in this subject you wont be able to find as much true information as in this one. And YOU'LL GET TO KNOW THE BOSNIA,KOSOVA AS YOU KNOW YOUR OWN COUNTRY - AND THAT'S ALL THANKS TO GREG CAMPBELL

The Road to Kosovo A Balkan Diary was a good fast read. I found his experiences similar to a "road trip" I had taken through the R.S. and Croatia with Bosniak License Plates while on vacation during my year working for the U.N. The book gives you a good feel for a foreigner's impression of the area.

Another piece of junk from noted gadfly and "see me, look at me" journalist Scott Taylor. It's simply a string of complaints against the mighty military powers that be in Canada. No thought, no substance, no policy review. Just whines.

Having spent years detesting Scott Taylor for his constant media attacks against the military, I finally picked up a copy of Tarnished Brass, and changed my mind. After reading that expose about top level corruption, I rushed out to buy the second book which Taylor and Nolan co-authored. Tested Mettle is the long overdue tribute to our long suffering troops....of which I was one. Few Canadians heard the details about the so-called peacekeeping missions which we were sent on. However, in this book Taylor & Nolan bring it all together, and still manage to hammer away at the politicians and the brass for their failure to provide proper support.
Any soldier still serving should pick up both these titles. Although I still can't stand the smarmy sight of Taylor on the television....I hope that he & Nolan are working on a new book soon.

Taylor and Nolan are to be commended for their extensive research and fine writing. As a former peacekeeper who served on two of the tours that Tested Mettle covers, I must say that these authors were able to capture the essence of what me and "the boys" went through. What I found truly shocking was their revelations about the senior level corruption and the lack of compassion for those soldiers who were wounded. I had always thought that my friend's case was an isolated issue of neglect, but now I realize that there was widespread systemic rot at "Fort Fumble on the Rideau" (NDHQ).
This book should be a "must read" for every citizen in Canada,-especially now that we are once again sending off our troops to War. Unless people realize how corrupted the system (not to mention the Officer corps) has become, there is little hope that things will improve in the rank and file. I had heard about this book years ago, but I felt that having "been there", it would not be of interest. I really wish now that I'd read it when it first came out!
I have already started reading Taylor and Nolan's first book,-Tarnished Brass:Crime and Corruption in the Canadian Military, and it is even more shocking and revealing.
These books are a must-read!

Lindsay was an OSS military advisor who fought with Tito's partisans in Slovenia against the Nazis in World War II. His account is a highly-readable thrilling adventure story - climbing snowy mountains with the Germans in pursuit, crossing streams in the night, directing parachute drops, organizing Allied supplies to the Partisans. Lindsay's matter-of-fact prose is effective and adds credibility. He disdains the frequent Allied advisors who are overly pro-Partisan, never losing his distrust of communism. But he clearly has a lot of respect for the Partisans' organizational skills, intelligence, courier lines, and tactics.

Some of the most interesting material discusses the inability of the US, UK, or Soviets to either create or find or support any indigenous resistance groups in Austria. Why? Several reasons, including the inescapable fact that Austrians were not so dissatisfied with the Nazi government, were less courageous than their counterparts in Yugoslavia, and were far more willing to lay low and wait for liberation rather than risk anything at all to hasten it.

The strongest chapters are the early ones, with Lindsay in the mountains of Slovenia, where he participates in the events he discusses. The book becomes noticeably weaker as the war winds down and Lindsay moves to Belgrade and is kept isolated by Tito and is unable to witness much of what he reports on. He does a game job of reconstructing events from other sources, but much of the immediacy and some of the credibility of the early material is lost.

The postwar political struggle for the (now-Italian) city of Trieste is fascinating. Tito coveted the city and its Adriatic access. The Yugoslavs were dogged, single-minded, and happily willing to engage in deceit to seize the city in the postwar settlements. Finally, Lindsay is entirely plausible in presenting the view that only the U.S.'s 1950 intervention in Korea prevented Stalin from attacking and subjugating Yugoslavia in the wake of Tito's break with the Soviet Union.

This is a strong book, not without flaws, but certainly enlightening and useful to scholars of the Balkans and World War II as well as to those who just enjoy a fascinating war adventure.

One of those books that demonstrates how reality is usually more interesting than fiction. Lindsay's account of his activities as an OSS operative in the former Yugoslavia during World War II is a much better read than most Cold War spy fiction. The text is very readable and hightly informative - not only about wartime events in Yugosalvia but also about the policies of the Allied governments and military in dealing with them. The book also provides a good deal of information on a topic that is covered very little in the English language: the struggle of the Slovenian Partisans against the Nazis. Lindsay points out that some of the first territories liberated within the Third Reich itself were in fact in the Slovenian provinces. Linday's observations of Tito and his senior staff just after the end of the war are also quite revealing. The text is, however, weaker where Lindsay does not speak about events he did not directly witness or take part in. Thus, he often cites rather uncritically a number of secondary sources on specific events in wartime Yugoslavia. Even so, the book as a whole is an excellent read and a valuable source of information on the subject and period that it covers.

I read this book specifically because I wanted to see what I could learn about partisan warfare from the military liaison point of view. I specifically wanted to see how many lessons might be applied to the situation in Afghanistan.

While I realize that one can not simply substitute the name "Afghanistan" for "Yugoslavia," I wanted to know if one could draw some more general lessons from our past experience - and who better to write about our past experience in such warfare than Franklin Lindsay!

Certainly the American news media is at a loss to explain not only the current dynamics but more significantly what tasks must yet be completed before we can hope for a stable, prosperous and free Afghanistan. By in large, the American media has not been able to get over the significant cultural differences. They simply aren't equipped.

And so I read Lindsay's book looking for far more than a ripping good adventure - and found it! While I can't claim to "understand" what to expect next from Afghanistan next, that is due more to the lack of good information. What I have now is a list of questions I believe critical to the overall success American foreign policy. I have a starting point. I have a framework, and I credit "Beacons in the Night" with helping identify for me the various key dynamics associated with fighting a numerically superior enemy and securing effective control over a large and diverse population.

America look out! The ground we trod has been crossed before. Listen and learn - the pitfalls are huge, but we can indeed succeed. Yugoslavia stands to serve as a beacon toward success - and a stark warning against failure.

What research! What an education! What a great introduction to the topic! What solid and enjoyable writing! This book was everything I'd hoped it would be - and more.

I recommend this book to anyone who wants a glimpse at the light at the end of the current terrorist-tunnel. This book isn't just history - it's an unflinching preview of 21st century warfare. ~Robert

Dusko Doder and Louise Branson's book covers Milosevic's life and path to power up to Kosovo, when NATO bombardment of Belgrade forced him to back down. The book reveals how Milosevic gave himself a name in 1987, when his boss, Serbian Communist Party leader Ivan Stambolic, sent him to Kosovo to quell down Serbian riots. When confronted by protesters who told them the Kosovo Albanians were beating them, he uttered the phrase, "No one will ever dare beat you again." He became a hero from that day on, a figure to whom the Serbs could rally around.

Milosevic knew that too and betrayed Stambolic, his political mentor, to become president of Serbia. The important things here are the parallels and dissimilarities between Tito and Milosevic. Tito, a communist, wanted a united Yugoslavia, a nation of Slovenes, Croats, Serbs, Montenegrins, Macedonians, Muslims, and Kosovars. Milosevic, a nationalist, wanted a united Serbia, but only for the Serbs. And he wanted to be leader of all Serbs, meaning the Montenegrins, Serbs in Serbia, Bosnian Serbs, and the Krajina Serbs. He even told Milan Panic, Yugoslavia's prime minister, that he was the "Ayatollah Khomeini of Serbia. The Serbs will follow me no matter what."

The trouble with that was, the Serbs in those other areas already had their own leaders, such as Radovan Karadzic, so he had to discredit them or put them down under his thumb, which ultimately didn't work.

Some things that have come to light is the back door deal between Milosevic and then-Croatian president Franjo Tudjman, on dividing Bosnia between them. Milosevic didn't care if he lost the Serb-populated Krajina and Eastern Slavonia, both in Croatia, saying that he would repopulate Kosovo with the Serbs from those regions.

But when the chips fall down, Milosevic used nationalism to get power for himself. The beginning of the end came in the middle of the war in Bosnia, when he was beset by UN sanctions and the Western economic blockade. His own position eroding so he endorsed the Vance-Owen plan to divide Bosnia into ten cantons--3 Serb, 3 Muslim, 2 Croat, 1 (Muslim-Croat), with Sarajevo organized like Washington D.C. Karadzic was vehemently against it and split with Milosevic.

Milosevic was the "man of the hour" at the Dayton talks, in which he agreed to give Sarajevo, the holy grail to Bosnian Serbs, to Muslims, as well as division of Republika Srpska by the Posovina corridor. It was not his to give, but he did it to make himself the good Serb to the West and to cut the Bosnian Serbs down to size. However, this move alienated him from true nationalists such as Karadzic and militia leader Vojislav Sesejl.

Milosevic seems no better than a schoolyard bully. He torments the weak but upon facing someone stronger, backs down, as he did in Kosovo. It took the non-violent student group OTPOR to oust him, but that's another book, which I hope is well-researched and documented like this book.

Some argue that Milosevic is solely responsible for the terrible deeds committed during the civil war in Yugoslavia in the 1990s: without the nationalist indoctrination and provocation undertaken by this tyrant, the war may never have taken place. Others argue that the war was inevitable, and that Milosevic was merely acting out a role that any Serbian leader in those circumstances was destined to play: the real villains here are the people of the former Yugoslavia who bear centuries-old grudges against their neighbours and are willing to obey orders to commit heinous moral crimes.

One would expect a biographer to adopt the former, 'Great Man Theory of History' position, and a historian to adopt the latter position, with its emphasis on longer-term historical processes. The authors strike an appropriate mix between these two explanations. As the title suggests, they pull no punches in depicting Milosevic as the epitome of Machiavellian evil, but they are also sensitive to the details of the social and political environment which allowed him to rise to the top. As such, the book reads less like a biography than an in-depth political history of Yugoslavia between the late-1980s and the present, and is therefore of interest to students of political science.

Milosevic met his future wife Mirjana Markovic at high school in Pozarevac. They also studied together at Belgrade University. Mira studied sociology and was by all accounts an outspoken firebrand; Sloba studied law and was by all accounts a dull spirit and unoriginal thinker - perfect, it would seem, for a career in the Communist Party. Slobodan's political instincts were finely tuned to the times. He knew that to climb up the Communist Party hierarchy, he had to have a mentor. Ivan Stambolic, a friend from Belgrade University, played this role for Milosevic. Articulate and well-connected, he moved up the hierarchy, and by 1975, he was Prime Minister of Serbia. Crucially, he never forgot about Milosevic. Slobodan followed him nearly every step of the way, until the late 1980s, when he started scheming to replace his former friend in the top job.

It was at this point that Milosevic made his infamous conversion from communism to nationalism, with typical Machiavellian poise. In April 1987, Kosovo was about to erupt into civil unrest, with the minority Serb population complaining about their treatment by the majority Albanian population and threatening a mass exodus. Prime Minister Stambolic ordered Milosevic to visit the province in order to calm both sides down. To put it succinctly, he disobeyed orders. Instead of calming them, Milosevic declared to an angry Serbian crowd that "No one will defeat you again". The ecstatic response of the crowd must have seared into Milosevic's mind the importance of the nationalist card. Over the next months and years he assembled a coalition with the aim of protecting Serbian rights from being trampled by her neighbours.

The Serbian nationalist mindset seems to be a curious mixture of glorification of military defeat (the 14th century Battle of Kosovo was an enormous defeat for the Serbs) and a belief that her neighbours are unjustly benefitting from the bravery of the Serbs in defending their freedom. Of course, there is some merit in the idea that the Serbs have received the rough end of the stick for centuries and should not be subjugated simply to preserve some delicate balance of power, as Tito evidently intended. However Serbia, with Milosevic at its helm, was surely the central player in the collapse and civil war that took place in the 1990s. When it was clear that the country was disintegrating, Milosevic made a secret deal with Slovenia, to allow it to secede. After the unilateral secession of Croatia in 1991, Milosevic planned to incorporate large swathes of Croatia in which there were Serb majorities. Infamously, he united with Croatia's Franjo Tudjman to invade Bosnia-Herzegovina and divide the spoils.

Doder and Branson also alert us to the wider international context in which the civil war was played out. The United Nations, and the various peace envoys sent to negotiate truces, assumed that self-determination for the various 'parts' of Yugoslavia was not only the answer, but the right thing to do. In the process, the beliefs of the substantial minority of people who saw themselves as first and foremost 'Yugoslavian' (but were perhaps not as vocal as the extreme nationalists) were disregarded. One is reminded of the current centripetal forces in Indonesia, and whether the United Nations would support its break-up.

The authors also point to the significant support of Milosevic by the United States, perhaps an extension of the tradition in American foreign policy of supporting dictatorships if they bring stability to the region. Milosevic was depicted as a peacemaker at the Dayton Peace Accords - requests to America by the Serbian opposition parties for assistance in deposing him were rebuffed. Four years later, however, following the collapse of the Rambouillet talks over Kosovo, Milosevic was depicted as a warmonger and the full force of NATO was brought against his nation.

Milosevic: Portrait of a Tyrant is valuable book for students interested in Yugoslavia's post-war political history, particularly since the 1980s. Written in 2000, it obviously excludes the war crimes indictment and trial. This process alone will require another Eichmann in Jerusalem, although given his recent performance, the focus ought to be the farce, rather than the banality, of evil.

2001: Slobodan Milosevic appeared in court somber-faced; remaining as defiant and arrogant as ever in response to the charges leveled at him by a presiding judge. It seems like he was brought to justice only by chance; consequently his indictment and later arrest proves that no war criminal can hide forever. His name cropped up repeatedly when war in Kosovo broke out in 1998 and more so when NATO forces intervened and bombed rump Yugoslavia throughout the spring and early summer of 1999. Years before, in Bosnia, he was seen as a problem-solver, appeasing opposing parties and mediators at the Dayton Accords. Three years later, he was seen as the opposite: manipulative, conniving, secretive, deceiving and a perpetrator of gross human rights. The question of his life and background has remained constant, one of speculation and mystery.

Dusko Doder and Louise Branson, therefore, have written the first definitive biography of Slobodan Milosevic. Although their work appeared some time before he was overthrown in October 2000 and later brought to justice in The Hague (obviously the biography is now in need of a little bit of revision in order for it to be up-to-date), it helped to place the Kosovo war into its proper context by focusing on Milosevic, who to all intended purposes, ignited the ethnic question in the Serbian province to his own advantage and did not balk at violating human rights toward transforming Kosovo into a province dominated by Serbs.

His early years, through his birth in Pozarevac, Serbia, on August 22, 1941, to his time at Belgrade University where he became a Communist Party member that played an important role in his development, are detailed in this biography. Emphasis is placed on Milosevic's two-faced diplomacy abroad and at home, where friends one day became enemies to be 'removed,' just like the people under his rule, seen through the wars in (respectively) Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo.

The biography is written and reads like a fast-paced novel, filled with all the almost unreal espionage and seedy characters to be ideally found in fiction. A study of Yugoslavia's demise is incomplete without Doder and Branson's magnificent and revealing biography; to date, there are other works coming out, and surely more will appear, but it remains to be seen if they surpass the current.

Shortly: this is the worst ever Lonely Planet Guide that I bought. I have just returned home from Croatia and this book didn't help me at all. I could have had a 5-pound stone in my pocket and it could have helped me more.

Explained: the book is absolutely incomplete because it simply doesn't cover the north half of the country (about half the territory of Croatia). It misses towns like Sisak, Virovitica, Cakovec and it doesn't contain anything about the Osijek castle. I don't know why the writer ignored this part of the country, I suppose she might have liked the beautiful sea-shore better but this doesn't make an excuse at all.

Then: it ignores some significant towns near the Bosnian border, like Knin and Sinj, I know these places aren't the most likeable ones but they have a historical significance - these were the cities most affected by the civil war and these places are a part of Croatian history and quite an important one.

Moreover: even though she spent most of her time on the shore, what about Novi Vinodolski, Senj, Karlobag, Umag, Porec and the inner Istria? These places are worth discovering and there isn't a single word about them in the book.

It is dated, because it doesn't contain up-to-date information about the country. For example: if you drive a car (having a picnic in the countryside) or walking around you should be prepared for mine fields - there are still many of them in the country. These fields aren't on the map and they are near main roads, too. The section on driving is incomplete in another aspects, too. There are also other failures and mistakes that I don't want to list, it would be too long to fit into a review.

So I don't suggest anyone buying this book. Try something else. This time Lonely Planet is your worst choice.

For a first edition travel guide, this book is excellent. Full of useful travel information and historical context. However, Croatia is changing massively and rapidly. It went from communism to authoritarianism to... maybe democracy this year. It went through wars and occupation and is rebuilding every day. It experienced massive migrations and refugee flows. Some of the information in this book (particularly in Eastern Slavonia) was already dated as the book went to press, there needs to be an annual update.

Finally a travel guide for Croatia. For several years, Croatia was left out of the various larger, multiple-country guidebooks; somehow it wasn't considered a part of Eastern Europe or Central Europe! I have worked in this country for about two years, and recently had the opportunity to explore the coast with the help of this book. The information was excellent and quite accurate, considering a year or more has passed since the publication and much has changed in that time. The only quibbles: some mistakes in the pronunciation guide, and the suggestion that people try swimming in the Drava River, which is polluted--a friend of mine wound up in the hospital for a week after taking a dip. My colleagues and I had to laugh at that recommendation! Like most tourist information on Croatia, the book is strong on the Adriatic and weak on the rest of the country--admittedly, not quite as spectacular, but with some places of interest nonetheless. The book is compact, the perfect size for toting around, and includes lots of intriguing historical sidebars. It will need updating soon, as the country is going through considerable change.

The Foreword says that human memory rids itself of the superfluous and retains only the important, as based on later events. It adjusts past reality to fit present needs and future hopes. MD says human relationships are more important than dry facts. He used his personal experiences to describe Stalin's enigmatic personality. How many others knew Stalin as an ally, became an enemy, and lived to write about it?

Wartime events led to misunderstandings with Moscow; they didn't realize that the resistance to the German and Italian invasion and occupation went on together with a domestic revolution. The latter caused friction with Great Britain (p.8). Moscow did not comprehend the fact that the Yugoslav Partisans grew into a regular army; Russian partisans were an auxiliary to their army. Tito's policy was to first look after their army and people, as in arranging an exchange of prisoners (p.10). The next was to form a new provisional government. While acting in their own interests, they followed the lead of Moscow (p.11). Djilas says their idolatry of Stalin resulted in an irrational acceptance of "unpleasant facts" (p.12). Djilas noted that Stalin's style was colorless, meager, and a jumble of vulgar journalism and the Bible (an ex-seminarian). Perhaps their hero worship was due to their need for a hero in their struggle against foreign and domestic enemies? Stalin's prediction of war's end in 1942 may have been a threat of a separate peace if no Second Front occurred.

In 1944 a delegation was sent to Moscow (p.13). It had a balanced ticket: General Terzich, Party leader Djilas, a financial expert, atomic physicist Savich, a sculptor.Djilas had never been to Russia and was not tainted with any "factional or deviationist past". They hoped to be recognized as the provisional legal government. Yugoslavia was famous in Russia for their 1941 revolt (p.43). Djilas' article were severely edited; were they afraid of a plain language code (p.44)? Stalin's army purges removed the incompetent and promoted younger and talented men (p.50). One day Djilas was told of an important matter; once in the car he is told he will meet Stalin (p.57). Stalin was of small stature and ungainly, with the white face of an office worker (p.61). Stalin spoke Russian well, but with an accent; he had a real knowledge of political history. Stalin had a sense of humor, and was very close to Molotov. Stalin spoke of 'Russia", not the 'Soviet Union'. While Stalin did not promise to recognize the National Committee as the provisional Yugoslav government, that was his favor. Stalin agreed to give military aid, but said an air base in Italy would be needed; it was soon established (p.64). After the Red Army reached Yugoslavia supplies came by land. Stalin warned Djilas of English duplicity, using the example of General Sikorski's plane crash (p.73). This may have decided Tito's flight to Rumania in 9/21/1944.

"Life is no respecter of desires or designs, but imposes patterns which no one is capable of foreseeing" (p.104). The "cult of the personality" caused this leader to disregard the changing needs and desires or others (p.106). (Another argument for term limits?) Stalin's behavior was no different from a tsar or hereditary king; Djilas expected better. Djilas writes a flattering description of Khrushchev, who was then in power (p.119-120). "No one can take freedom from another without losing his own" (p.133). Is this a principle or just empty rhetoric?

Although I read this as a requirement for one of my classes this semester (East Europe Since 1918), I found it genuinely interesting, enough that I began and finished it in the same day. Djilas was one of the top communists of Yugoslavia, and was part of the first communist foreign missions to the Soviet Union. His book treads from the opening euphoria of the promise of socialism and its new expression, including the near-worship of its manifest leader, Stalin. Then doubts begin to creep in as he is horrified by the actions of the Red Army in his homeland and the relationship that the Soviets--communist comrades--wish to compel upon the Yugoslavs. Quickly this moves to deep disappointment as he realizes that for all their propaganda, the Soviets are truly just a different embodiment of Imperialistic Russia and that the more things have changed, the more they have actually remained the same. His personal insights into the character of the Soviet leaders lend this book a feeling of pathos that goes far beyond its historicity. Here, Stalin is seen as the man that he was, and his monstrosity is only magnified under that understanding.

Djilas' first hand account of events, keen observations and great writing style combine to give you much more insight about communism and Stalin than you would expect from a book this size. Don't miss it.

This book is a fine example of prejudiced & politically correct mind/morals-rottening diatribe against Croat "nationalism" (the central stigma for "liberal" kowtowing/alterocentric historical revisionists thinly disguised as professionals in the field). one thing cannot be dissected in full measure, because it lies beyond the scope of the book. And this is that Ivo Goldstein is a PC historian (PhD and all that jazz notwithstanding), a product of socialist revisionism that sought to curb all "nationalisms" by falsifying many facets of national histories. Goldstein is a product of this Marxist reductionism that coalesced with newer political correctness (after the collapse of Communism) in joint diatribes against that "malign nationalists who prevent the materialization ( a la Sai Baba, I guess) of liberal pigsty paradise".

Also, it is completely in line both with Goldstein's previous work on medieval Croatian history (a book and numerous articles), where he expounds his own "shrinking" and minimalist version of Croatian medievalistics (hopelessly wandering in the desert left by his former mentor, a self-appointed iconoclastic historian Nada Klaic (although he has gone far beyond her; he's elevated her quirky iconoclasm to Croatian hamartiology):

--Goldstein's previous work consists of a book (Hrvatska povijest ranog srednjeg vijeka/Croatian history in early Middle Ages) and numerous articles. They all show similar traits:

a) reductionsim ( Goldstein's misusage of early historical chronicles (Byzantine, Venetian, Frankish) is legendary). His mentor's (Nada Klaic) works had blundered this way, but not so radically. More- his pseudoscholium is based on free distortions of historical sources ("hey- this fits. I'll take it. Hmm. And-*this* must be wrong, some kind of mistake since it gives a mental fodder to nasty nationalists. Hence- I'll ignore this manuscript (Byzantine, Arabic, Venetian) altogether") without a clear argumentation- just pompous pronouncements). For instance, much more equipped historians like Stanko Guldescu, Ivo Peric, Tomislav Raukar etc. are in direct collision with his "findings". He hilariously chopped Croatia's territorry in 9th/10th century by more than 30-40%, with no argumentation whatsoever save a few dismissive remarks.

b) he consciously ignored some "unpleasant" facts about early Croat architecture ( complexities with Stonehengean astronomic resonances) and minimalized the worth of Croatian Renaissance and Baroque literaure (which is the best literary output of any Slavic nation in that period ( add the Danish or Dutch lit, for that matter)), although it lags behind masterworks of Renaissance Spain, France or England.

c) even as a medievalist Goldstein flunked. As a national history surveyor, his short book is a case of heavy misreading serving, as has been said, the new revisionism which tries to rewrite last 10 (or so) ex-Yu history as a sort of mixture of nationalist hysterics heydey and redistribution of "guilt" (not entirely- he knows some things are too transparent). His "treatment" of president Tudjman and his political maneuvres whereby Croatia acquired her independence virtually against the majority of "int. players" is instigated by his vitriolic hatred of all things Croatian that have even an angstromsize connection with the fallen Independent State of Croatia (NDH). Hell- he's always preferred Yu integrations. Under the guise of impartiality Goldstein sells his own agenda: good (but misinformed) internatonales, bad provincial Balkan chauvinists, ..... Just another pamphlet disguised as a history. Read Ivo Peric, Stjepan Antoljak "A Survey of Croatian History" or Marcus Tanner if you want something more reliable. In this case- academic credentials are just a smokescreen.

I purchased this book based on customer reviews posted at that time. Some of the reviews were posted by Croatian scholars and they were very positive. I was under the impression that I would be provided with an unbiased history of Croatia and its conflicts. The reviews also indicated that the book would highlight only the most significant historical details.

This book may be a relatively unbiased account and I will assume that the details covered only the most significant events, however the presentation of this information was extremely difficult to follow. The book includes very few summary paragraphs to introduce broad historical movements and their impact before diving into often exceptionally detailed accounts of specific incidents. There was rarely an adequate summary or closure to a chapter. Some of the most important events were somewhat hidden and de-emphasized. No brief descriptions of significant historical figures and their impact were included. Their names were only briefly mentioned in connection to a specific event, then these figures were sometimes discussed later in the text as being important. IN addition, the order of events was not consistently chronological. More maps with greater detail would have given some of the additional guidance I had expected.

A reader more familiar with the region and some of the historical figures, the geography, etc., may have been much more satisfied with this book. I do not recommend it as an introduction to the country and its development.

It was in the fourth century, when the Roman empire split into East and West, with the boundary between the two new empires stretching from the Montenegrin coast up the river Drina to the confluence of the Sava and the Danube, and then further north. This boundary division was to remain unchanged for 1,500 years and be the line where the European Catholic West met the Byzantine Orthodox East. While there were (and still are) ethnic similarities between the peoples on the two sides of the divide, both their culture and history differ fundamentally. The Croats and Croatia on the western side are traditionally linked with Hungary, Italy, German and Western Europe, and are influenced by their long Mediterranean coastline. Ivo Goldstein is Professor of Medieval History at the University of Zagreb and a former Director of the Institute for Croatian History of the University of Zagreb. In Croatia: A History, Professor Goldstein presents a welcome and scholarly history providing an invaluable, authoritative view of Croatian culture and national character, both in its own terms and in relation to it's immediate neighbors.

This book is an excellent analysis of the Bosnian war. While the writer at times might ramble on, it is still one of the best books out there by a great journalist. Rieff knows his stuff and I would say that this book is essential for any study on the conflict. His points are quite cogent and he makes an excellent case against the UN's conduct in the war. This is an important piece for the serious Balkan reader.

Mr. Rieff writes with such a poetic style that the subject becomes alive and fluid! Though the subject is tragic the writing style is magical. Every page drew me in and refused to let me go until I had turned to the next. A very well researched and poignant book.

Published while the slaughter in Bosnia was not yet over this book provides a dated, yet chilling, view of the conflict in this God forsaken region. I say conflict because it cannot be considered war. I've read it before in other books and seen it in pictures and movies but Bosnia truly was the "Slaughterhouse" that Mr. Rieff describes.

These were ordinary people; doctors, teachers, parents, etc. that grew up in the bosom of civilization, in Europe. They expected that civilization to shield them from the horrors unleashed by the Bosnian Serbs and were shellshocked when it didn't. Comprehension was beyond them, this simply COULD NOT happen at the end of the 20th century in the heart of Europe, but it did. The worst slaughter in Europe since the Holocaust, 250,000 dead. Why? Mr. Rieff comes to the same conclusion as most; myth and delusion. The Turk/Janissary/Handzar were coming for the Serbs in their beds, only, it was actually the Chetniks murdering and raping instead.

"Why did they murder a 70 year old Bosniac?

Don't you understand they did it because in 1389 the Turks beat Prince Lazar on the Kossovo Polje?"

GAAAH!

Because of when this was written it is a dated history but still very valuable because Mr. Rieff was there, as an American, whose perspective any American (Westerner) will understand. His disbelief and horror echoes your own. A horrible read in that it will make you want to weep but a great way to begin to comprehend what happened.