Overview

A serious and persuasive questioning of the SerbsAI reputation as children of darkness in the Yugoslav War, drawing upon conversations with Serbian intellectuals in their capital. Illuminating and compelling.O-John Scanlan, former U.S. ambassador to Yugoslavia (1985-1989).

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9781566630610

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An important book...a story that badly needs telling. In a clear and lively manner, she weaves historical background with contemporary observations, leading the reader through the complex and confusing Balkan maze.--John Scanlan Former U.S. Ambassador To Yugoslavia

A perfect antidote to the mediaís version of the war in Yugoslavia...no one can know the meaning of the Serbian tragedy without reading this book. -- Barry Schwartz, author of The Battle for Human Nature Her account travels through the intellectual soul of a people in an ancient city caught between old terrors and a modern United Nations embargo, a people too diverse, divided, and complicated to be easily demonized. -- Clarence Page, Pulitzer Prize-winning syndicated columnist, <I>Chicago Tribune<I> * Former U.S. Ambassador To Yugoslavia * An important book...a story that badly needs telling. In a clear and lively manner, she weaves historical background with contemporary observations, leading the reader through the complex and confusing Balkan maze. -- John Scanlan * Former U.S. Ambassador To Yugoslavia *

A frustratingly incomplete, often meandering collection of interviews that shines only intermittent light on the Balkan conflict. Levinsohn (Harold Washington: A Political Biography, 1983) spent several weeks in Belgrade in late 1993, interviewing intellectuals - broadly defined to include writers, lawyers, and government officials - and presenting their views in large chunks of verbatim dialogue. I have great faith in the direct words of the people involved, she asserts. But oral history needs much more shaping to be effective. The book reads like an edited diary, an unsatisfactory form for such a complicated conflict. Levinsohn's ultimate agenda is to make some moral equivalencies: Perhaps the view of the Muslims and the Croats as helpless victims of these wars will be replaced with a more realistic picture of three peoples fighting each other on fairly equal terms. Unfortunately, while those she meets certainly counteract the stereotype of bloodthirsty Serbs, her reporting is too sketchy to back up her contention, nor does she try to assess how realistic the Serbs' picture of themselves as a persecuted people is. There are some valuable vignettes: a former New York Times stringer describing the international media as tilted against Serbia; a meeting of the Serbia-Jewish Friendship Society, appalled by American Jewish support for Bosnian Muslims; a newspaper editor explaining how Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic has turned United Nations sanctions to his advantage; a filmmaker claiming that the Bosnian Muslims are really Serbs ; novelist Branimir Scepanovic, damning the US as the most genocidal nation in the world ; a United States Information Agency official, fluent in the local language (unlike the author), who acknowledges that sanctions have weakened, not strengthened, local democracy. Levinsohn is credulous on occasion, but often tries to rebut on her informants' rhetoric. Parachute journal-ism. (Kirkus Reviews)

A perfect antidote to the mediais version of the war in Yugoslavia...no one can know the meaning of the Serbian tragedy without reading this book.--Barry Schwartz

Author Information

Florence H. Levinson was an independent journalist who wrote widely on politics and urban affairs. Her books include Harold Washington: A Political Biography; School Desegregation: Shadow and Substance; and, most recently, Belgrade: Among the Serbs.

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