As a mixed-ethnicity Bosnian who lived through this war, I must say the editors of this book were extremely well informed.
They present a set of writing from both local and foreign contributors painting a vivid picture of the true events in Bosnia and the surrounding area, as well as international reactions and the complete peace process.
The book was completed in December 1993, and came out on the market in March 1994, so it does not include the events from 1994 and later, which are also critical to understanding the war and its outcome, but I still strongly recommend it, because it is one of the best books on Bosnia of 1990-1993.

As a mixed-ethnicity Bosnian who lived through this war, I must say the editors of this book were extremely well informed.
They present a set of writings from both local and foreign contributors painting a vivid picture of the true events in Bosnia and the surrounding area, as well as international reactions and the complete peace process.
The book was completed in December 1993, and came out on the market in March 1994, so it does not include the events from 1994 and later, which are also critical to understanding the war and its outcome, but I still strongly recommend it, because it is one of the best books on Bosnia of 1990-1993.

An important collection of essays, interviews and literary texts, providing a richly varied introduction to Bosnia's multi-national and multi-cultural society, while chronicling and analysing its internationally sanctioned destruction. An ideal starting point.

Bosnia has pretty much faded into the background of American concern. When the American Division of the NATO Implementation Force (IFOR) rolled in on December 1995, the spotlight was on Bosnia and Americans became aware of the military role that their forces would play in the Balkans. Out of the tragedy and confusion of war came a book entitled "Cry Bosnia" by Paul Harris which chronicled the war in Bosnia itself through words and pictures.

Inspired by the success of Cry Bosnia, Ruppert Murray decided to write a similar book which would focus on the peacekeepers themselves rather than the political elements of Bosnia. His idea was merely to write minimal text with pictures but as he began to interview the soldiers and have them share their opinions, backgrounds and experiences the book began to take a life of its own. IFOR on IFOR is the soldiers' stories of their perceptions of why and how they came to Bosnia and what they feel their presence will accomplish.

The book is divided into three sectors representing the United States of America Division, the British Division and the French Division. He interviews the men and women of the armed forces who candidly share their views with him. Listen to these young warriors as they share their apathy, hope, and naivite in sharing their views of their deployment. The voices are diverse within each division and you can see the differences of opinions that run from nation to nation. The insights you get are extraordinary.

On a personal note, I was deployed to Bosnia and stayed there for a year. Everything that you have read, heard and seen in these interviews are what I experienced with this group of international soldiers. I highly recommend this book to you in getting the story of the soldier. Six copies returned home with me and many more were purchased for friends and relatives. This is an excellent chronicle in pictures and words.

This book offers a valuable insight into the attitudes of military personnel who were stationed in Bosnia to implement the Dayton Accord. I have read many books on Bosnia which have fuelled my indignation at how the international community stood by and let the Serbs mount what is tantamount to a genocidal war against Bosnian Muslims. This book gives an idea of how military people felt about the Bosnian issue. Their attitudes range from the idealistic and noble to short-sighted and complacent ( in fact some will fill you with rage at their indifference). It is rare that one encounters a book dealing with a major historical issue which allows the ordinary person, albeit a soldier, to articulate their views so openly. The photographs are excellent and Mr Wolfe Murray's introduction is very insightful. It would, however, have been even more interesting to have a similar book which gives voice to those UN troops who were there at the height of the conflict.

The book was given to me by the author himself with dedication and as soon as I read it it became my absolute favourite. IFOR on IFOR has the largest accumulation of reviews, interviews and facts as well as interesting thoughts not only by the author himself but by the interviewed soldiers as well. As the author is in Bosnia from 1993, he knows the situation so if you need a close-up look on our rugged country check this book out.

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.

This is the best book on the situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina since the war ended in 1995.

This is a great idea to have up to date information on travel destinations around the world. I was looking for information like this for my trip to Bosnia. Thanks and keep up the good work!

I find the book not only informative about the history of the balkans, but it also provides a breathtaking account of the hardships vivited upon the Bosnian people cruelity that was visisted upon Bosnia and its children thanks to the ethnic cleasnisng project engineered and conducted by Serb nationalists. Indeed, Mr Nicholson is not only a good story teller, but he is a jouralist whose account of the Bosnian war is filled with depth, compassion and courage. I have read this book over and over again, and it is simply difficult to put down. I recommened it to students of the balkan history and those who want to follow a career in journalism and creative writing. Welcome to sarajevo is a masterpiece!!!

Weine's book is by no means narrow in its subject-matter. He touches on: inter-ethnic marriage, criticisms of the United Nations, memory as a ground for social morality, the challenges of refugees in America, the construction of psychoses, the social deification of doctors, urbanism, the identity of Europe and the Balkans, the impact of communist cultural censorship, fundamentalism, the social responsibilities of psychiatrists, the need for a permanent UN war crimes court, and discontinuities in the lifepaths of trauma survivors. Any one of these issues could have been the topic for his relatively short 230 page book. But together, they paint a picture of the multifaceted chaos that is ethnic conflict. We get the sense that nothing here is simple, that everything is interconnected, and that the ethnic cleansing is not a psychiatric, geographic, military, or political issue, but fundamentally a human problem of persons.

So if you are looking for a deep and careful study of the psychological issues that afflict ethnic cleansing survivors, then I suppose that this book is not your source. If you want, on the other hand, a compelling and touching tour through a recent crisis of human history and a casual chat with a knowledgeable, connected, and compassionate person,then Stevan Weine's book is the perfect choice...END

This is a hard book to rate, for any number of reasons. For one thing, it's not nicely rounded; it doesn't tell a complete story, but provides a blistering snapshot of a small slice of history and an investigation still in process. For another, its photos and text don't work closely together, but provide approximately parallel looks into the same awful tale. Hardest of all is the stunning vividness of the photography by Gilles Peress, and the nagging suspicion that we share some small portion of blame for this.

Simply put, _The Graves_ is a collection of photographs of dead bodies and skeletons, the anonymous mass graves from which they were exhumed, the remnants of their clothing and contents of their pockets, the relatives that survived them; and a text that describes the painstaking and horrifying process of trying to identify them and divine how they came to die.

Srebenica and Vukovar are two towns in eastern Bosnia-Herzegovina, where in July of 1995, hundreds of Muslim men -- unarmed, defenseless, and bound -- were apparently shot by soldiers of the Serbian army under Ratko Mladic and then bulldozed under mounds of earth.

Five years later, most of those responsible still roam freely in the former Yugoslavia, though the International Criminal Tribunal in the Hague steadily sifts evidence and issues warrants for their arrest. This book depicts some of the effort to establish evidence of their guilt ... and is itself damning evidence.

The photos by Peress, all black and white, are horridly beautiful in their mute, pinpoint clarity. They record a creepy new form of archaeology, where shiny white teeth peek out of the dirt, leg bones remain encased in socks and athletic shoes, entire bodies rise out of the near past, shorn of flesh but still comfortably clothed. They could be ancient remains, and one struggles to comprehend that they were alive, page after page of them, not very long ago.

Stover's text gives some historical context for these graphic images, records the testimony of surviving witnesses, and offers brief portraits of the men and women -- forensic pathologists, archaeologists, x-ray technicians -- who sift through this grisly treasure. Peress also photographs them at work, relaxing with a guitar, and the waiting, anxious families with their charity canned goods and stuffed toys.

This is a stark, stolid book, one that serves as a necessary reminder that what happens on the other side of the planet matters, and that no matter how much relative attention we give them, some things are worse than being sent back to Cuba to live with one's father. Much worse.

Stover and Peress, through searing words and photographs, have created a record of the two greatest war crimes in the conflicts that accompanied the breakup of Yugoslavia. The sack of the eastern Croatian town of Vukovar in 1991 by Serb forces, and the subsequent mass murder of over 200 patients and staff from the local hospital is still a powerful and pivotal event, not only because of the sheer magnitude of the atrocity, but also because it was the first. Vukovar came before the siege of Sarajevo, the rape and torture camps in Prijedor and Foca and elsewhere, before the destruction of Mostar bridge, and the massacre at Srebrenica. Vukovar set the standard for the atrocities that were to come, and eight years after its destruction, the town is still a hollowed-out ruin with weeds poking through shattered buildings and one-fourth of its prewar population clinging precariously to subsistence in a destroyed economy. The siege and fall of Bosnia's Srebrenica in 1995, engineered by indicted war criminal Ratko Mladic has been amply documented elsewhere, but this book is not a military history or the reconstruction of the crime. Rather it is about the search for the missing and the identification of bodies pulled from mass graves. The authors follow the forensic specialists, the anthropologists and physicians who have created a sad but necessary specialty in this field. The exhumations are part of the search for the truth, not only for the half-grieving, half-hopeful survivors who cling to rumors about their loved ones, but for all people of compassion who hope that finding some finality, and perhaps some justice, at the bottom of these graves will serve both the living and the dead. The exhumations and identifications are carried out according to strict forensic standards so the results can be used as evidence at the Hague war crimes tribunal. If we are to forge any positive legacy from these atrocities, it may lie in allowing the children of both the victims and the executioners to lead normal lives, free from fear and revenge and poisonous hatred. Memories are long in this region, and vengeance can take decades. The woman who runs an orphanage for young Srebrenica survivors observes, "What is important now is the message the international community sends to these boys and what they then tell their own children. If you say to a child, 'Look, that man there killed your father, and now he lives in your house.' What kind of message is that going to send? But if you say, 'That man killed your father and that is why he is in prison.' The message is very different. So, for now, there might not be a lot of hatred or revenge, but if we don't find a way to punish those responsible for these crimes, it will surely be something we can count on in the future." To date, neither Mladic nor the "Vukovar Three" are in the tribunal's custody. For the children's sake, we can do better.

This is an amazing book, detailing evidence collection by the ICTY war crimes tribunal at two mass grave sites - Srebrenica, a predominantly Muslim town in eastern Bosnia; and Vukovar, a mixed Serb-Croat town in eastern Croatia (contrary to the view of the previous reviewer, Vukovar is neither Muslim nor Bosnian). The photos are phenomenal. After a wrenching reading, one comes away with a few scattered thoughts. Namely: 'never again, and 'thank god there is an international tribunal to carry out prosecutions for these events when domestic courts are unwilling to do so'.

There have now been two ICTY indictees arrested for Srebrenica, the trial is ongoing as of this writing. None of the 'Vukovar Three', reportedly hiding out in Belgrade have been arrested yet.

Justice is far too slow. But at least with the ICTY, there is some chance for a bit of justice after all.

Noel Malcolm attempts to provide a general overview of history of Bosnia in this highly acclaimed work. Though a serious scholarly work on this subject has yet to appear, as of 1999, this book is by far the best guide to Bosnian history. Despite the fact that it is overtly polemical and biased against nationalist histories that fueled the genocide against the Bosnian Muslims, it still remains a considerable work whose main strengths are its lucid stye and its wealth of information.

Malcolm's BOSNIA: A SHORT HISTORY is an outstanding work. The book shows the range of Bosnian history and the rich complexity and texture of its various religions. It puts into perspective the savage attack on Bosnia, both by nationalist militias and by propagandist media within the former Yugoslavia.

Particularly impressive is the discussion of the Bosnian Church, which brings into a clear and accessible language the breakthroughs by Balkan and Western historians on early Bosnian Church history. Malcolm demolishes the mythologized history of the Serbian and Croatian militias by showing that the patterns of conversion in Bosnia were historically complex. He refutes the notion that present day Catholics, Orthodox, and Muslims are derived in a straight pattern of blood descent from the 15th century. Indeed, there were large-scale conversions back and forth throughout the history of Bosnia.

This is no abstract scholarly debate. The stereotype that present-day Bosnian Muslims are descendants of "traitors" in the 15th century who betrayed Christianity is a key element in the attack on Bosnia and also a part of the mythology of "age old hatreds" promulgated by the architects of ethnic-cleansing and adopted by some Western policy makers and journalists.

Malcolm shows that Bosnia was for 500 years, despite its many tensions and wars, a successful civilization with different religions that engaged each other in complex ways far beyond the cliches of age-old hatreds.

This book is recommended for anyone who cares about the Balkans or who wishes to understand the stakes involved in the struggle against "ethnic cleansing."

Malcolm's analysis of the radical Serbian nationalism in Belgrade was unfortunately dismissed by some British political leaders and intellectuals. The horrors in Kosovo today are a tragic vindication of his analysis. Those who dismissed him with a facile refusal to acknowledge an unwelcome message, are left brutal evidence of what they denied.

Malcolm no doubt, and all of us, wish he had been wrong--or at least that his warnings, stated with such cogency and scholarly accuracy, had been heeded. There is still time to read this book now and allow the history of Bosnia to come through the smoke of genocide, ethnic-cleansing, and desires for religous apartheid based on historically false and destructive mythologies of age-old hatreds.

Being a Bosnian, I find this book highly valuable and unusually accurate. As my fellow Bosnian Adnan Mesic pointed out in his review, this is a very accurate and comprehensive account of Bosnian history. I agree with Adnan that it is a shame that the most lucid and most importantly unbiased book was written by an American. Malcolm divulges in his book major historical events which may have contributed to the war in Bosnia. It is clear that Malcolm had conducted a meticulous research before he completed this book; this is highly evident from the great number of references which are included. All in all, this is an indispensable reference that will provide an important insight into the history of Bosnia. Strongly recommended.

Zlata's diary, it is written by Zlata Filipovic. It takes place in Sarajevo,Bosnia between 1991-1993. There was a war going on and Zlata is a victim. What she does to express her feelings is write them down in journal form. In my opinion I really enjoyed this book, it showed many interresting things and points about war. One point is that no child nor an adult should go through this rough time. In this time period it was so rough that they had no electricity, wayer or even gas for heat. Another point is that this book is really good because it has a happy endings. I like happy endings because they make you cheerful after all of the sad, mad and hurtful times, which Zlata's Diary did. This character is Zlata, she's very wise and thoughtful because she knows what to do when something goes wrong and when someone is hurt she trys to cheer them up. Zlata is also scared because when something happens that is really bad she crys or gets really careless, This is the main character and is my favorite. The theme of the book is a young girl writing down her thoughts about how she feels about this war and how it effects her. I would reccomend this book to any person age is 10 and up because it is a higher level book and contains alot of information. It would most likely be a girl because they would like to hear about rough times and they might even have a diary of their own. Last I hope you will try to consider this book to read.

The book Zlata's Diary by Zlata Filipovic herself, takes place in Sarajevo, Bosnia from 1991-1993. During most of this time a war is going on. Zlata, the twelve year-old girl who writes in her diary, is very up-beat and strong. She reminds her parents and herself what hopes the future may bring. She is also very friendly to anyone or anything. Zlata is obedient too. She doesn't go into any of the dangerous rooms or go outside when told not to. As you could probably tell, Zlata's Diary is writen as a diary, or journal entries genre. The way it's writen is intresting because you are reading exactly now the person felt or what they thought about something. So it's almost like reading your brother or sister's diary, only the fact the Zlata is mostly writing about the war. This fact, I thought was o.k., but it would have been better if she wrote more about her view or how she felt through it all. Although, Zlata did show that war is never good and that kids should never go through it. She had to see her parents struggliing and changing so often. She wasn't even allowed to go outside or play with any of her friends or even go to school. She saw loved ones move away or sometimes die. She had to suffer sometimes with little to eat and little supplies. I overall enjoyed this book because, to me, it was very interesting to read about war through a child's eyes who is about my age. It made me realize that you really shouldn't take anything for granted in life. It was also neat to read a published diary of a child. I would recommend Zlata's Diary to a girl of almost any age who likes to read diaries, or who likes to read about war directly from a girl's eyes.

Zlata's diary is an overall so-so book. It does not have the literal quality, nor the originality of Anne Frank's diary, but it has something else very important: a clear picture of what was going on in Sarajevo during the beginning of the Bosnian war.(Remember, Zlata left in mid of 1993, there were two and a half more years that other Sarajevans spent in war...This book was a view of a girl, 11 years old, who saw the people that were her neighbors until yesterday go to the mountains around the city and shoot at her, her family and friends, and innocent many others she didn't know but she felt sad for...Zlata gives out a picture of what it was like to live under fire every day, where your every move could be your last, where you are not safe not in your home, nor deep underground in the shelter. It was a time of sadness for Sarajevo, which used to be one of Europe's most metropolitan cities. Zlata's diary serves not to spread propaganda and evoke sadness in the West and make sure it does something,this book is so the West can be ashamed of what it didn't do. It is a great reference for anyone who plans to write about, or visit Sarajevo.