Serbia Books

Kosovo: War and Revenge

Tim Judah

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 11 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Tim Judah lived in Belgrade from 1990 to 1995, reporting for the London Times and the New York Review of Books; and when the "ethnic cleansing" started in Kosovo, he was there. So his Kosovo: War and Revenge is well placed to offer some insights, variously scathing and compassionate, on the whole, sorry mess. It doesn't matter how many Serbian tanks you (allegedly) knock out with your high-tech bombing raids, "since the most potent weapon in ethnic cleansing is the cigarette lighter needed to set houses on fire." And Judah can evoke the madness of Kosovo in a single, startling set piece: vengeful Albanians rampaging through a Serbian Orthodox priest's house, smashing icons, stealing candles; French soldiers from KFOR "looking on amiably"; a nearby Gypsy house also on fire; and a passing French commander explaining to an open-mouthed Judah that the official NATO policy at this moment is "to let them pillage." Paraphrasing a Belgrade journalist, he notes sadly that Serbia has still not found its Adenauer, nor Kosovo its Mandela, which is what both so desperately need. The introductory chapter, summarizing Kosovo's tortured and tortuous history, is better rendered in Noel Malcolm's Kosovo: A Short History, and for a wider overview of the Balkans themselves, one would certainly prefer Misha Glenny's The Balkans: Nationalism, War, and the Great Powers 1809-1999. For an acerbic and perceptive personal account, however, Judah's book is hard to beat. --Christopher Hart, Amazon.co.uk

Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian, a Grammar: With Sociolinguistic Commentary

Ronelle Alexander

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Total reviews: 6 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian, a Grammar analyzes and clarifies the complex, dynamic language situation in the former Yugoslavia. Addressing squarely the issues connected with the splintering of Serbo-Croatian into component languages, this volume provides teachers and learners with practical solutions and highlights the differences among the languages as well as the communicative core that they all share. The first book to cover all three components of the post-Yugoslav linguistic environment, this reference manual features:



· Thorough presentation of the grammar common to Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian, with explication of all the major differences
· Examples from a broad range of spoken language and literature
· New approaches to accent and clitic ordering, two of the most difficult points in BCS grammar
· Order of grammar presentation in chapters 1–16 keyed to corresponding lessons in Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian, a Textbook
· "Sociolinguistic commentary" explicating the cultural and political context within which Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian function and have been defined
· Separate indexes of the grammar and sociolinguistic commentary, and of all words discussed in both

Black Aces High: The Story of a Modern Fighter Squadron at War

Robert K. Wilcox

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Total reviews: 11 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

In 1999, when Serbia attacked the small country of Kosovo, the USS Roosevelt was steaming through the Mediterranean. In a matter of days, thirty pilots-veterans and rookies alike-were about to become the lethal tip of a fast, furious, high-tech knife. And the Black Aces Squadron VF-41-a team of mechanics, technicians, electronic warfare specialists-would plunge their weapon into the heart of the enemy...

This extraordinary book takes us into the world of Naval aviation in action: the training, launching, dog-fighting and the feeling of a multi-million dollar F-14A Tomcat pushed literally to its breaking point. From a harrowing account of a pilot's ejection from an exploding plane to the deadly cat-and-mouse games the F-14s played with deadly enemy forces on the ground, BLACK ACES HIGH straps us into the cockpit, hurtles us through SAM-laced night skies, and goes behind the scenes to meet the flesh-and-blood men and women whose skill and courage reinvented warfare-just when we needed it most...

With Their Backs to the World: Portraits from Serbia

Asne Seierstad

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Personal Portraits of Serbians 4 out of 5 stars.
6 of 6 people found this review helpful.

I very much enjoyed this book. The author covers individual serbs. She displays a deep effection for the people of Serbia. The book profiles by chapter ordinary people and politicians and journalists. I thought the author did a good job of covering a wide collection of perspectives, a Titoist, a follower of Milosovich, a democratic reformer, a wheeler/dealer/con man, a journalist. I thougth the portrait of the rock singer was the most engaging. Very nice read and I thought presented a human face to a country that in the west is vastly misunderstood.

Editorial Review:

From beloved international reporter Åsne Seierstad comes a remarkable exploration of the lives of ordinary Serbs under the regime of Slobodan Milosevic-during the dramatic events leading up to his fall, and finally in the troubled years that have followed. Seierstad traveled extensively through Serbia between 1999 and 2004, following the lives of people from across the political spectrum. Her moving and perceptive account follows nationalists, Titoists, Yugonostalgics, rock stars, fugitives, and poets. Seierstad brings her acclaimed attention to detail to bear on the lives of those whom she encounters in With Their Backs to the World, as she creates a kaleidoscopic portrait of a nation made up of so many different-and often conflicting-hopes, dreams, and points of view.

Peace at Any Price: How the World Failed Kosovo (Crises in World Politics)

Iain King, Whit Mason

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Subjects -> Nonfiction -> Politics -> Freedom & Security -> International Security

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Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

In June 1999, after three months of NATO air strikes had driven Serbian forces back from the province of Kosovo, the United Nations Security Council authorized creation of an interim civilian administration. Under this mandate, the UN was empowered to coordinate reconstruction, maintain law and order, protect human rights, and create democratic institutions. Six years later, the UN's special envoy to Kosovo, Kai Eide, described the state of Kosovo: "The current economic situation remains bleak. . . . respect for rule of law is inadequately entrenched and the mechanisms to enforce it are not sufficiently developed. . . . with regard to the foundation of a multiethnic society, the situation is grim."

In Peace at Any Price, Iain King and Whit Mason describe why, despite an unprecedented commitment of resources, the UN Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK), supported militarily by NATO, has failed to achieve its goals. Their in-depth account is personal and passionate yet analytical and tightly argued. Both authors served with UNMIK and believe that the international community has a duty to intervene in regional conflicts, but they suggest that Kosovo reveals the difficult challenges inherent in such interventions. They also identify avoidable mistakes made at nearly every juncture by the UN and NATO. We can be sure that the international community will be called on to intervene again to restore the peace of shattered countries. The lessons of Kosovo, cogently presented in Peace at Any Price, will be critically important to those charged with future missions.

Kosovo : Contending Voices on Balkan Interventions

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Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Powerful commentary on the most volatile international event of the year--the conflict in Kosovo.

This is the first book in any language to bring together--in powerful point-counterpoint format--political, ethical, and cultural commentary on the Kosovo conflict by internationally renowned contributors. Also woven into the book are moving firsthand stories of the suffering Balkan people.

Composed of some sixty essays written in dialog with one another, the book contains assessments by noted politicians and analysts (Henry Kissinger, Juergen Haberman, Zbigniew Brzezinski), government officials (Javier Solana, Kofi Annan, Vaclav Havel, Morton Halperin), award-winning journalists (Mark Danner, Tim Judah, Robert Kaplan), human rights advocates (Julie Mertus), theologians and ethicists (Jean Bethke Elshtain, Brian Hehir, David Little, Vatican Archbishop Tauran, Stanley Harakas), historians (Miranda Vickers), military leaders (General Wesley Clark), and many other key figures.

This book also includes photos, maps, a time line, a list of key names, NATO objectives, and online resources for further study of this critical regional conflict with worldwide implications.

Kosovo: A Short History

Noel Malcolm

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Total reviews: 85 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Kosovo, a 55-mile-long plateau in southern Serbia bordering Albania and Macedonia, should by all rights be a historical and political backwater. A Bulgarian geographer who visited Kosovo during World War I remarked that it was "almost as unknown and inaccessible as a stretch of land in Central Africa." The observation would prove ironically fitting by the '90s, as Central Africa and Kosovo both became sites of widespread genocide, fueled by ethnic hatreds, of the deepest international significance. Noel Malcolm, a British historian and journalist who has written extensively about the Balkans (including a companion volume of sorts on Bosnia), provides an overview of Kosovo's long-standing cultural divisions in his "short history" (although, at more than 500 pages, a not so short book).

Readers following the unfolding war in Kosovo through newspaper and television coverage may well ask why ethnic Albanians and Serbs are struggling so violently to command the small region. Kosovo, Malcolm explains, is the birthplace of Serbian nationalism; the defeat of Serbian forces there in 1389 by Turkish troops became emblematic of the fall of the Serbian empire, as it led to Turkish domination of the Balkans. Contemporary warriors of Serbia are, in Malcolm's eyes, evidently attempting to reverse the course of history by reclaiming the land from its Turkish conquerors--but in the absence of the Turks, they'll take it from the Albanians (the largest ethnic group among Kosovo's inhabitants) whose ancestors converted to Islam when the Turks ruled the region. Malcolm's lucid text shows again and again that the ethnic conflict in Kosovo is less a battle over bloodlines and religion than it is one over differing conceptions of national origins and history. "When ordinary Serbs learn to think more rationally and humanely about Kosovo, and more critically about some of their national myths," he concludes, "all the people of Kosovo and Serbia will benefit--not least the Serbs themselves." --Gregory McNamee

The Myth of Ethnic War: Serbia And Croatia in the 1990s

V. P., Jr. Gagnon

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Kosovo: How Myths and Truths Started a War

Julie A. Mertus

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Total reviews: 9 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Julie Mertus provides one of the first comprehensive looks at the explosive situation in Kosovo, where years of simmering tensions between Serbs and Albanians erupted in armed conflict in 1998. In a profound and detailed study of national identity and ethnic conflict, Mertus demonstrates how myths and truths can start a war. She shows how our identity as individuals and as members of groups is defined through the telling and remembering of stories. Real or imagined, these stories shape our understanding of ourselves as heroes, martyrs, conquerors, or victims. Once we see ourselves as victims, Mertus claims, we feel morally justified to become perpetrators.
Based on a series of interviews conducted in Kosovo, Serbia proper, and Macedonia, this book is one of the first extended treatments of the years leading to war in Kosovo. Mertus examines the formation of Serbian national identity, and closely scrutinizes the hostilities of the region. She shows how myth and experience inform the political ideologies of Kosovo, and explores how these competing beliefs are created and perpetuated. This sobering overview of the region provides a window into a complex struggle whose repercussions reach far into the international community.

The Serbs (The Peoples of Europe)

Sima M. Cirkovic

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Book for the start 5 out of 5 stars.
11 of 13 people found this review helpful.

This is a good book for someone who want to start exploring a history of Serbs, and gives you a basic information about people, culture and political and social history. For others this is a book you realy need for personal library.

A wonderful history of the Serbs 5 out of 5 stars.
7 of 12 people found this review helpful.

The Serbs have been the victims of terribe crimes for the last 600 years. An independent Slavic people they were brought under Ottoman colonialism after the battle of Kosovo Polje in 1389. They suffered enslavement and Ottoman slave raids as well as the barbarism of the Jannisaries who abducted Serb women and children. After 1804 they began to fight for their freedom from this colonialism. That freedom was snuffed out in 1914 by an Austro-German invasion during the First World War. Serbia survived and was amalgamated into Yugoslavia. In 1941 it was again carved up and the Croatian/Ustache-Nazi genocide killed 10% of the Serbian people. Serbs were ethnically cleansed from Kosovo, Slovenia and Croatia. After the war the country fell under the Communist yoke. In the 1990s the western powers and their Islamist and Croat allies conspired to dismember the rest of Serbia, slicing off Bosnia and then Kosovo and Montenegro. But the Serbian people survive, a testament to their tenacious instincts and fighting ability. Like the Armenians they are one of the tragic peoples of history, forgotten and abused.

Editorial Review:

This sweeping history of the Serbian people starts with the settlement of the Slavs on the Balkan Peninsula in the seventh century and ends with the dissolution of Yugoslavia at the end of the twentieth century.

• A comprehensive survey of the development of the Serbian nation.
  
• Provides the background history of the Serbs, essential to understanding their current situation.
  
• Traces the history of the Serbian people from the seventh through to the late twentieth century.
  
• Focuses on the process of integration and disintegration which have characterised Serbian history.
  
• Pays detailed attention to socio-economic history.