A very special book.

One of the stereotypes about Bosnia and the recent conflicts was the common complaint that the history and culture of the region were impossibly complex, incomprehensible. The stereotype furnished a convenient excuse for those who wished to acquiesce in the organized aggression and crimes and the country and its people.

This short book is the clearest, most accessible account of Bosnian culture, history, and identity available in English. It should be the first book read in any discussion of Bosnia. Each phase of history--from the medieval period to the tragic wars and genocide of 1992-1995--is depicted with concision, humanity, and depth. The writing is lucid and the stunning black-and-white photo-illustrations are integrated with care and sensitivity into the narrative. Recommended not only for those interested in Bosnia-Herzegovina only, but for those interested in European history, East-West relations, and the dynamic of religion, culture, and identity; i.e. to both specialists in the Balkans and to the wide readership of those interested in history and culture anywhere.

The reader will emerge with a sense not of incomprehensibility, but of the richness, vitality, and uniqueness of an extraordinary place and people.

An exceptional book, from an exceptional writer. Not that many people understand all the intricacies of Bosnain culture like Ivan Lovrenovic does. Simply, one of the best books you can read about often misunderstood Bosnia.

Out of the now almost countless array of books published over the last decade and meant to 'explain' what happened in Yugoslavia, John Allcock's "Explaining Yugoslavia" is among the best. In fact, readers need go no farther if they're looking for a one-volume analysis of the former Yugoslavia and some of the underlying reasons for the country's violent and bloody collapse. Allcock, a sociologist, analyzes historical, cultural, political, social/societal, economic and other factors and skillfully ties them together to provide a comprehensive picture of the peoples of the former Yugoslavia and reasonable answers to the question of why their common state fell apart. Allcock essentially sees the root cause for the failure of Yugoslavia in the country's economy, but this is hardly economic reductionism - he stresses the importance of the interplay of numerous other factors. If this book is not the definitive 'explanation of Yugoslavia' (something that will likely never be achieved), it is a large and important step in that direction.

Allcock traces the present of the "former Yugoslavia" back to its distant roots - and does a great job. Organised around issues (eg. "economic modernisation", "the movement of population", "violence"), his genre of historical sociology offers remarkable insights.

Oxford historian Richard Crampton praised this book as "making many Balkan backstairs intrigues, including those of the last few years, more comprehensible" (New York Review of Books, January 11, 2001, p.18). Rightly so.

I think this book is the best book ever for getting to know the basics for this language. I know several words in serbian already but I will be meeting my in laws for the first time and I need to know more than everyday words and enough to get by . I have purchased several learning books for a ton more money than this book for the language and this has been th most helpful. They have the pronunciation in English and it's exactly the way I know it's suppose to sound due to looking at the words I already know !

a wonderful well written travel book to get you started learning the serbian language. the book works best when you read thrugh it 2-3 times.then ibegan using cassettes for pronunciation. i would also recommend all of the teach yourself serbo- croat series by TY. it worked for me.I recently traveled to serbia and montenegro ( Yugoslavia)a beautiful country with great food and wonderful people. i loved yugoslavia so much i plan to move their this summer when i graduate from high school. i now am practically fluent in serbian because i have taken night school and saturday evening classes. its all because this little book that got me so fascinated about sebian language and serbian people. i love serbia and am counting the days now. (26) DAYS. in the near future my whole immediate family may move to serbia. i hope you read this and if you do you have got to buy this book. i found it at Borders. so as the serbs would say Dobro dosli!

Having just read Halberstam's latest book, mostly on Yugoslavia, I was tempted to look into the history of that former country. I found this book on my shelf and gobbled it up in one sitting.

It is the story of Djilas' family in Montenegro, from before the 1st World War until after the revolution that brought Tito to power. It is truly brilliant autobio and also give great insights into the passions that Tito's death helped to unleash in the region.

First, Djilas' family was a kind of local gentry, with leadership responsibilities as well as blood debts to pay. As a child, Djilis had to worry for his father's life, which was threatened by retribution. It is hard to imagine how a grade-school kid survived that psychologically whole and in the end was the one to end the cycle of revenge-feuds. He brings these anxieties to life in chilling detail.

Second, there are the destructive impulses - pathologies, really - that infected everything in Baakan life. This included his father's shame in the memory that he was called on to participate in the massacre of a peaceful muslim village nearby, which is horrifically described, as well as the long discussions with his would-be killers who staked out his house at night. You will really feel them when you read this.

Third, there is the death of Montenegro's independence as a nation, which forms the backdrop to the book. It demonstrates how shaky the foundation of the nation was and how little Tito did to help overcome these divisions in spite of his caudillo-like rule over almost 40 years.

What emerges in this book is how truly great a writer Djilas was, one of the best European writers of the 20C in my opinion. I could not read it in the original, but the translation is simply wonderful. SO many phrases combine wisdom and elegant succinctness, such as: "the story of a family is the story of a land." While he might have been a bit self-serving - he was a dissident who started out as Tito's propaganda minister - Djilas portrays himself as a tolerant humanist and democrat in this book. His voice will be missed as one of reason for that troubled region.

Highest recommendation. You enter a world long departed and yet, as recent events show, still determining the tragedies of the present.

Born in Montenegro in 1911, Milovan Djilas saw his homeland folded into the communist built nation of Yugoslavia. In deceptively simple, yet lyrical, prose he explains the political, religious and racial feuds that play a crucial role in the region's history. Rising to leadership in the communist party, Djilas was later expelled from the party and imprisoned for "slandering Yugoslavia" a.k.a. speaking his mind. This is a rich, intense and unforgettable book that sheds light on the past as on the continuing saga of the Balkans.

...this is an excellent book. It is a must read for all those people who care about what actually goes on in the world. Although some articles are quite long, they are interesting and are great at showing how we have been misled by the media. How many people who have not read this book honestly knew that the "dictator" Milosevic doesn't even have a majority in parliament? Also great at showing how we don't think about things, such as how will bombing people help them? Or did the U.S. really intervene for humanitarian reasons, and if so why haven't we invaded Turkey?

Involved in children humanitarian help during the Bosnian War and despite knowing the Western media bias, reading this book was an eye-opener. It showed all the interests of major powers in the region and explained the rational beyond the wars (Bosnia, Kosovo). Combined with Brzezinsky's 'The Great Game' title of the books could read: Realpolitik, theory and practice. A must read for anyone wanting to understand South-Eastern Europe and Middle East politics today.

I have read several books directly related to the Former Yugoslavia (Yugoslavia: Death of a Nation; Love Thy Neighbor, a Story of War; Yugoslavia and After) and books related to the former Yugoslavia (To End a War; Blood and Belonging). Those books were very informative, about the "how's" and "why's" of the war and the facts of what happened, for the most part. However, I believe it is the short stories of the former Yugoslavia, that are particularly helpful in adding a face to the place, a soul to the picture. This place, recent war, and its former present and aftermath has inspired those that were in it, and outside of it to read, write or learn all about it. The author, Novakovich, chose to write about it. This book helps you get inside of the situation without even being there. As you read this book,you can feel inside your soul what is true or seems fictitious related to this place, and this situation. The books that I mentioned above, are very good, and I add this book into the "good" category, along with them. I urge you to read this book, especially if the books you've been reading before about former Yugoslavia, are simply detailed fact books. Treat yourself to some poetry and prose such as this, and your soul will be stirred with the truth.

I'm actually surprised at how well many of Novakovich's stories about Croatia in the early 1990s, especially "Sheepskin" and "Crimson" capture the mood and feel of life at the time, given that he has been living in the U.S. since the 1970s. These two stories in particular reflect the brutal and at times surreal atmosphere of life in wartime Croatia. Also moving are his stories that deal with various aspects of the immigrant experience in America. Novakovich is one of those writers who can really evoke a sense of time and place, I found myself haunted by many of these stories days after reading them.

Who are refugees? People who fled the wars in Bosnia and Croatia are scattered in Missouri and Ontario, Germany and Austria, Israel and Pakistan, and they are displaced to other towns within their own countries. They are not voluntary emigrants whose bags are packed with hopes in search of a dream. They may be wealthy, or at least they may once have been. The refugee cleaning floors for minimum wage may have been a surgeon in her own life. The eight-year old girl may be the only one in her family who has learned English, so it is only she who can speak with government officials and store clerks. Refugees are anyone and everyone. They are professionals and farmers and little boys and criminals and poets, but mostly they are women and children and the elderly.

The Suitcase gives voice to the people "without context". They speak of their dreams and their losses. Their poems are here and sad scenes of small things washed away forever by tides of war. "War taught us a lot. How the fear makes people irrationally greedy. It is difficult to resist becoming greedy. It is almost like an instinct. To possess, to hold on to something. In shelters, to hold on to somebody. To hold on to your prayer, even if you never prayed before". Some refugees long only for the day when they can return to their hometowns to begin to reglue the shards of their old lives. Some can speak only of Bosnia's beauty or the pleasures of a cup of coffee with friends.

Others close and lock the door on the past with determination. "We arrived here safely. Everyone is fine. Please do not write us or try to contact us. We do not want to be reminded of anything", reads the postcard sent by a Bosnian family after they arrived in Canada in 1994.

The book is well-edited and well-organized along five broad themes. These are followed by three powerful afterwords, of which Dubravka Ugresic's is the strongest as she muses on the fact that the people of the Balkans are one people. Divided by the same language, they look alike, and yet "not one generation in the Balkans manages to escape war, in every family there is at least one killer and one killed, new life only begins on somebody else's dead head." There is one minor error (p.11, Vukovar was attacked in 1991, not 1992).

The Suitcase rings powerfully and true. The simple message here is that refugees are people, and the lives they lead are but a shot away for us all.

The Suitcase is a wonderful and sorrowful journey into the hearts of an oppressed and victimized land. the personal stories are of those who, throughout history have had no voice. Any person with a sense of history will surely feel the magnitude of the plight of a refugee.

The authors argue passionately against NATO's military intervention in the former Yugoslavia. They show convincingly that intervention is just a cover for the selfish interests of the NATO powers, and that it will delay, not promote, a durable peace. They also oppose what they rightly call the inhuman economic sanctions that the UN imposed on the people of Serbia and Montenegro.

Now 60,000 NATO troops, including 15,000 British, are going in, supposedly to enforce a cease﷓fire in Bosnia. The authors demolish the arguments of those who call on outside powers to intervene for humanitarian or other reasons. We should recall that the 1918-1922 war of intervention against the Soviet Union started 'to police the armistice'. A Labour Government sent troops into northern Ireland in 1969 on a humanitarian pretext. Now we are at last seeing peace again there, ending that unjust interference and occupation, and we do not want another long-term foreign aggression to start.

The authors judge that "While publicly claiming humanitarian concern, each of the imperialist powers is in reality seeking to advance its own economic, political, and strategic military interests, which conflict in an increasingly sharp way during a period of world capitalist depression." (p. 11) The Western capitalist powers aim to reduce Eastern Europe's countries again to semi-colonies. The US Government wants "to block its imperialist rivals in Europe from getting a firmer economic foothold in the former Yugoslavia." (p. 62) The member states of the European Union, while pretending to have a common policy, pursue their own interests, in Yugoslavia as elsewhere.

The NATO forces will not be holding the ring but rigging the fight. Everyone knows that the USA armed and trained the Croat and Bosnian Muslim armed forces. Remember that the USA, while supposedly bringing democracy to Haiti, was funding death squads that killed hundreds of supporters of the elected government (Guardian, 4 December 1995). If the USA wants peace in Bosnia, why lift the arms ban? As the authors sum up, intervention will probably bring "more deaths, destruction, denial of national sovereignty, and brutal economic exploitation." (p. 18). It also risks spreading the war to other countries in Eastern Europe.

The war in Yugoslavia arose originally from conditions of worsening capitalist decline. The government there cut back on planned cooperation and relied increasingly on market forces. These created competition between regions and enterprises, and deepened regional inequalities, increasing pressures towards devolution and breakup. The government imported goods that Yugoslavs could have produced themselves, running up huge debts and increasing unemployment. Outside forces seized on these internal failings.

The people of Yugoslavia can solve their own problems, by taking the responsibility for rebuilding their country. As an independent socialist country, Yugoslavia enabled its people to live together. They must learn to live together again, a process in which outside forces can play no part.

"What are the roots of the carnage and the developing European war in wake of the collapse of Yugoslavia?

"The answer is not 'age-old ethnic and religious conflicts,' as the daily papers and TV newscasts say. What's happening in Yugoslavia is a product of the crisis and intensifying conflicts of the depression-ridden world capitalist system.

"Rival gangs of would-be capitalists--fragments of the former Yugoslav Stalinist regime--drape themselves in nationalist colors in a war for territory and resources that is against the interests of all working people in Yugoslavia. Washington and its competitors in Europe are intervening militarily to protect and advance their respective interests.

"The articles collected in this book tell the truth about Yugoslavia and why working people the world over should oppose military intervention" (from the back cover).

Finally a complete and compelling analysis of the U.S. media and its coverage of the conflict in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Masterfully and methodically, Sadkovich dissects and analyzes all the media personalities, forces, intricacies and often contradictory doctrines that shaped the coverage of the war. Sadkovich not only confronts the "Watergate Syndrome" of the U.S. media head on and explains the "who, what, where, how and why", he exposes the underbelly of the U.S. media and by extension the diplomatic and special interest circles that fueled and manipulated the "image" of the conflict as a civil and ethnic war.

Thoroughly researched and referenced, Sadkovich's work not only scrutinizes the conflict through current complex media theories and international legal frames of reference, but convincingly challenges the prevailing notion of "equal guilt amongst warring factions" and responsibility for the conflict.

Sadkovich not o! nly sets the stage, explains the players and the plot, but also exposes readers to what went on behind the curtain.

His refreshing academic "no holds barred" approach should prove enlightening and educational to both the casual reader and industry professionals who have followed the conflict from the outset. A must read!

Sadkovich takes a deserving critical eye at the role of the U.S. media in the wars in the former Yugoslavia. Here finally is an authour who is outlining the responsibility of the mainstream press during the wars. It is only unfortunate his research does not include British and other foreign journalists.

I have read many books in which the authors attempt to account for the causes of the Bosnian conflict. The problem with these books is that the authors provide an oversimplified and shallow description of the war in Bosnia. This book however manages to give a thorough and in-depth analysis of the causes of the Bosnian conflict. In my opinion, the authors have managed to explain which political and social factors gave rise to the war in Bosnia. Giving a detailed historical background of the conflict, the authors allow the reader to gain an important insight into historical events that may have contributed to the enormous disparities among Muslims, Croats and Serbs. In addition, the involvement of Serbia and Croatia in the Bosnian war is thoroughly examined. There is ample evidence that Serbia and Croatia provided Bosnian Serbs and Croats with arms. Furthermore it is well known that Serbian forces committed a large majority of the war crimes in Bosnia. In conclusion, this book will help you gain a richer understanding of the Bosnian conflict. Strongly recommended.

Burg and Shoup's book will stand for some years as the definitive work on the Bosnian war and the missteps of international intervention there. It is a must read by anyone interested in what happened in that mountainous Balkan country.

This book is rather detailed and is not meant to be a 'quick read' for the casual reader. Instead, it uses a vast array of sources from the region as well as the Western press and interviews to make its case about the goals of the three sides as well as the desire of the 'West' to stay out of the conflict. Furthermore, it provides a much-needed and accessible overview of the various peace plans and maps which aimed at stopping the carnage in Bosnia.

It is an excellent book which sets a new standard for research on ethnic conflicts and international policy.