Milosevic: Portrait of a Tyrant

Book Description

Who is Slobodan Milosevic?

Is he the next Saddam Hussein, the leader of a renegade nation who will continue to torment the United States for years to come? Or is he the next Moammar Qaddafi, an international outcast silenced for good by a resolute American bombing campaign?

The war in Kosovo in the spring of 1999 introduced many Americans to the man the newspapers have called "the butcher of the Balkans," but few understand the crucial role he has played and continues to play in the most troubled part of Europe. Directly or indirectly, Milosevic has waged war and instigated brutal ethnic cleansing in Croatia, Bosnia, and Kosovo, and he was indicted for war crimes in May 1999. Milosevic's rise to power, from lowly Serbian apparatchik to president of Yugoslavia, is a tale of intrigue, cynical manipulation, and deceit whose full dimensions have never been presented to the American public.

In this first full-length biography of the Yugoslav leader, veteran foreign correspondents Dusko Doder and Louise Branson paint a disturbing portrait of a cunning politician who has not shied from fomenting wars and double-crossing enemies and allies alike in his ruthless pursuit of power. Whereas most dictators encourage a cult of personality around themselves, Milosevic has been content to operate in the shadows, shunning publicity and allowing others to grab the limelight -- and then to take the heat when things go badly. Milosevic's secretive style, the authors show, emerged in response to a family history of depression (both of his parents committed suicide) and has served him well as he begins his second decade in power.

Doder and Branson introduce us to the key figures behind Milosevic's rise: his wife, Mirjana Markovic, who is often described (with justification) as a Serbian Lady Macbeth, and the Balkan and American politicians who learned, too late, about the costs of underestimating Milosevic. They also reveal how the United States refused to take the necessary action in 1992 to remove Milosevic from power without bloodshed -- not realizing that he uses such moments of weakness as opportunities to lull his opponents into traps, thereby paving the way for a new consolidation of power. Now, in the wake of the victory in Kosovo, it remains to be seen whether America will learn this lesson or whether we will allow this deeply troubled man to continue to pose a threat to European peace and security as the twenty-first century dawns.

Customer Reviews:

Well-painted portrait of a tyrant.......2002-07-21

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.

An invaluable biography of Milosevic.......2001-09-12

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.

Eichmann Redux.......2001-07-15

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.

An Essential Read.......2000-04-02

This portrait of one of most disruptive and important figures in the Balkans is handled with insight,balance,and a deep knowledge of the historical and cultural complexities of Southeastern Europe. From a journalist team who lived in the region and speak its languages, the reader is given a unique and accurate picture of the Balkan psyche, mentalities, unresolved aspirations, and crosswinds of post-Cold War tensions which continue to play out in the region. It is an indespensible volume necessary for understanding both past and future events.

BALCAN TURMOIL.......2000-03-03

This book is the perfectly reflecting the situation in Serbia under dictatorship of Slobodan Milosevic. The author is extremely well informed about the facts of Balcan turmoil, provoked by dictator Slobodan Milosevic. Excellent reading selection for any serious politician.

Average customer rating:

Better for Mira than for Slobo. Not as biased as the media, but it's still there
A deep understanding of the past and future

Milosevic: A Biography
Adam LeBor
Manufacturer: Yale University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Similar Items:

Serpent in the Bosom: The Rise and Fall of Slobodan Milosevic

ASIN: 0300103174

Book Description

Slobodan Milosevic, a man the world hoped it would never see again, is currently on trial at the International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague for crimes against humanity. This engrossing biography documents the life of the former Serbian leader, whose policies instigated wars in Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, and Kosovo as well as the bloody campaigns of ethnic cleansing that destroyed a once multi-national country. Drawing on his unrivalled access to many of those closest to Milosevic, author and journalist Adam LeBor describes his subject's unhappy childhood, his marriage, and important friendships. He offers details about the ascendancy of crime over politics in the new republic and the secret channels used by Milosevic and Croatian President Franjo Tudjman as they conspired to carve up Bosnia. LeBor recounts the history of the negotiations between Milosevic and the Western diplomats, politicians, and businessmen with whom he dealt, and tells the tragic story of the wars. Finally he portrays the unprecedented international operation that brought down the Milosevic regime in 2001 and led to his trial at the International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague. A gripping account of Europe's first rogue leader in the post-cold war period, this book is also a revelatory look at the tragic story of the collapse of a country and the role played by the West.

Customer Reviews:

Better for Mira than for Slobo. Not as biased as the media, but it's still there.......2006-06-25

I found the first few chapters of this book to be the most interesting. They were the only ones where you seem to dip into Slobo's personal life. Descriptions of his home life, his meeting with Mira [they met at 15 and stayed together until his death at 65] and his rise through to positions of power are all very interesting. It's odd how he seems to have been a fairly normal person in his pre-politician years.

Comments from Mira are referenced throughout the book, and the rest of it seems to tell you more about her personal life than his. Some of these comments are quite amusing; she really is quite an oddball. The best was the one just after Slobo had been arrested, which went something like "No-one has betrayed him. He knows that no-one has betrayed him. The only one who has betrayed him is me." [not exact words]

After reading up on the topics, it seems to me that the case against Slobo has been made too one-sided by our media. Lebrun admits this at times. Anyone who knows about Slobo's regime knows that he cannot be called a "dictator"; far from controlling everything that went on, he was often hardly in control of anything. This makes judicial proceedings very difficult when he could have been responsible for everything or for nothing. However, the evidence seems to suggest that he was much more moderate than other people in Serbia. The main domestic opposition to his regime in the 1990s were hardcore nationalists, and they tended to see Slobo as a man who was selling out Serbia. When Slobo met with the Bosnian Serb militia leaders, they refused to shake his hand. During the Dayton Peace Negotiations, the Bosnian Serbs seemed to hate the Belgrade government as much as they hated the Muslims and Croats. Mira has often written condemnations of the actions of Bosnian Serbs, and called them "not even men". Could it all have been a craftily-constructed public front? Perhaps, but that seems very unlikely considering how nothing is ever organised in Serbia. Lebrun also details Franjo Tudjman's crimes and his great ideas like renaming the memorial to the victims of the Croat W.W.2 genocide as "The Shrine of Croat Heroes" or something like that. Lebrum could do with subjecting the K.L.A. to the same expose that he gave to Tudjman.

Lebrun also seems to be a bit unfair to Slobo at times. Perhaps, he thought that he needed to do this, or the biography would just be dismissed as unacceptable by everyone and the points mentioned above would have never been put into the circulation of ideas. Some parts seem to speculate on Slobo's motives and fill in the gaps in ways that are arbitrary. I say this because no sources are provided to back up the speculations. Examples of this include:

1 Why Slobo supported independence for Slovenia. Lebrun thinks that he only did it for his long-term interests and not out of any principle. Sounds a bit of an obscure motive to me.
2 Election fraud. A case when the Serb opposition claimed that elections had been fixed in some places saw the parliament call in international observers. These observers claimed that the results had been fixed, and parliament accepted their findings. Lebrun seems to think that Slobo himself fixed the elections and then decided to change his mind and let inspectors in. There needs to be some resource to back up this accusation of schizephenia.
3 Apparently, Slobo deliberately gave a scarey speach to a meeting of Serb liberals so that they would all leave Serbia. Really? Sounds a bit of a risky strategy when they could have just as easily decided to vote against him.
4 Lebrun suggests that the ousting of Stambolic was all a clever plot and the accusations were fabricated by Slobo's supporters. He then used his influence in the parliament to get the fake accusations upheld. This seems a bit strange when Stambolic was much more powerful than Slobo at the time.
5 Every time that Slobo is seen to be nice, Lebrun dismisses it as just him being two-faced. He even met with the leader of a student anti-government demonstration once, had a good chat with him and made a few concessions. Not ever seen Tony Blair do that, I must say.

Lebrun claims that Slobo had great loyalty within the party. He apparently had his men everywhere and had the republic of Montenegro firmly under the will of Serbia. Again, he never gives any evidence for this. If it is true, then I would be very interested to know how he built up this influence. People don't just become loyal to anyone. Slobo was not a particularly charismatic politician nor was he someone with very clear principles to always stick to. He seems a very unlikely candidate to inspire such loyalty in so many people. Is it so unreasonable to think that people just voted the same way Slobo did because they thought that he had a reasonable argument? Or that Montenegro just agreed with Serbia off its own free will? If you deny these, you have to explain it. Serbia was not a regime with a secret police that arrested anyone who dissented. There are also odd moments when Lebrun seems to paint the ultra-nationalist opposition to Slobo in a more favourable light than I am confortable with.

What is clear is that he was guilty of some domestic crimes. He was certainly involved in corruption as regards public funds and allocation of public positions. He ran the economy very poorly. It also seems likely that, at some point, he sold weapons to Bosnian Serbs. This is not a good thing, but please show me a government anywhere in the world that has not, at some point, sold weapons to people who have gone on to use them in massacres. At the time of being published, it also appeared that Slobo had had a role in the assassination of Stambolic, but the court in Serbia has subsequently cleared him of such a role. Lebrun can't be blamed for not knowing the future though.

All in all, it is worth reading. However, I'd advise that you read resources like http://www.slobodan-milosevic.org as well to get a balanced picture. To get the hardcore anti-Slobo case, just look through back copies of any Western newspaper. Also, it is a shame that Lebrun didn't go into more detail as to Slobo's private. For me, that is the most important part of a biography.

A deep understanding of the past and future.......2004-06-07

The disintegration of Yugoslavia into a horrible series of wars and battles that pitted formerly peaceful neighbors against each other is a very important part of modern European history. It tested the relationship between America and Europe on all levels. And it was where the strengths and weaknesses of the NATO alliance have been most clearly illustrated.

Getting your head around this incredibly complex situation can only be done by examining the man who methodically tore a once-proud country and people to shreds: Slobodan Milosevic.

How was this drab functionary able to completely destroy a prosperous nation? How was he able to create civil wars between villagers that had lived peacefully side by side for generations? Why was he supported and even admired by the Western politicians while simultaneously overseeing some of the worst atrocities against humans since WWII?

Through interviews with all of the key figures that surrounded Milosevic - including his wife Mira Markovic! - Adam LeBor paints a vivid picture of the man at the center of this terrible tragedy.

As a reporter in the Balkans during the wars, Mr. LeBor saw first hand the results of Milosevic's terrible reign. As a proven history writer, he has managed to take his first hand experiences and meld them with historical perspective, so we wind up with an incredibly sharp picture of the key events themselves, but framed within an understanding of the event in the overall historical narrative.

This book is the only work I have seen that makes the Balkans understandable to the common Westerner, and is important for that very reason. However, it also resonates particularly clearly in the world we live in post 9/11, where we again are partnered with NATO and involved in wars in foreign lands with tribal people in a land and culture that are driven by a web of beliefs and interconnectedness that we do not understand.

Book Description

his fascinating and insightful biography of Slobodan Milosevic offers an up-to-date account of his life, career, and downfall. It sheds much-needed new light on the man known as 'Belgrade's tyrant' and the successor to Tito, the 'Butcher of the Balkans.' Stevanovic looks at all of Milosevic's wrongdoings, tells stories from the victims, and provides a shocking portrait of his psychology. More than just the biography of a dictator, the book looks at the influences that shaped him, and the people that affected his life.

Serpent in the Bosom: The Rise and Fall of Slobodan Milosevic

Average customer rating:

An example of historical determinism
Slobo not party animal
Excellent one volume treatment of Milosevic's rule

Serpent in the Bosom: The Rise and Fall of Slobodan Milosevic
Lenard J. Cohen
Manufacturer: Westview Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0813329027

Book Description

A riveting look into the life, personality, and policies of Serbia's president, Slobodan Milosevic. The violent disintegration of the former Yugoslavia highlights the importance of a detailed understanding of the Balkan region. The political outlook and behavior of the Serbs and Serbian elites has been particularly bewildering to Western citizens and decision-makers. Serpent in the Bosom provides an analysis of Serbian politics from 1987 to 2002 that centers on an examination of Slobodan Milosevic's rise to power, his pattern of rule, the war in Kosovo, and the recent democratic "revolution" in Serbia. Lenard Cohen examines Milosevic's shrewd admixture of Serbian nationalism and socialism and his utilization of the media, and other agencies, as part of his "technology of rule." He explores Milosevic's complex relationship with Serbia's intelligentsia, the Orthodox church, the police, and the army, as well as Serbian-Albanian relations and the Belgrade regime's ongoing controversy with Montenegro's political leadership. What emerges is a clearer understanding of Serbia's enigmatic leader, his influence on the Balkans, and the process of political transition in Yugoslavia.

This revised and updated edition includes material on Milosevic's indictment before the International Tribunal at Hague and an analysis of Yugoslav political developments since 00/12.

Customer Reviews:

An example of historical determinism.......2005-07-06

Cohen pays all too little attention to Kosovo in this treatment of Milosevic-era Serbia, downplays popular culture (in spite of his professions to the contrary), and urges that the reader accept a version of historical determinism in which the actions of Serbs are seen as determined by the Ottoman occupation which ended in the nineteenth century. Cohen shows himself to have been sympathetic to the Serbian nationalist-expansionist project even while expressing a veiled contempt for Serbs. If one wants to understand Milosevic or, for that matter, Serbia in the Milosevic era, one would do a lot better to turn to the splendid treatments by Louis Sell or Adam LeBor.

Slobo not party animal.......2005-04-29

This is the best of the Milosevic books in terms of biographical information for those interested in what kind of man he really is.

Granted, there isn't a lot of detail about him, but it's most than others. Something is always missing when people describe him--he was a charming but complete cynical bastardo. One has to be impressed with the trained abiltity to just lie to people outright and make them believe it. A man with no vision but a knack for quick power plays, the wily Slobo finally committed about fifty too many war crimes and just had to go. He now resides in The Hague, where his high blood pressure will be the ultimate judge before the hasty four-year trial wraps up.

Slobo sounds like a rather banal, cold dude. His rule was hardly prosperous. Multiple wars, sanctions, NATO bombs, refugees, massive atrocities--again, Slobo's skill is his ability to paint himself as a not-so-perfect leader who is no worse than anyone else. The country was run into the ground and finally they just couldn't take the atrocities and burned the Parliament building.

A very thorough account of the Milosevic years, though obviously Milosevic-centric. More than a biography of the leader, a pretty good history book as well.

Revised edition is inevitable. If he survives sentencing, we can possibly expect the autobiography, in which Slobo writes his own history book.

Excellent one volume treatment of Milosevic's rule.......2001-08-01

This book is the best English-language treatment to date of Milosevic's rule in Serbia as can be found in a single volume.

It is not just a biography, though that, too, can be found in the sections discussing Milosevic's rise to power (frequently drawing on the pathbreaking work of Serb journalist Slavoljub Djukic). Cohen's work is much more a well-researched account of the main political events, players, and contexts in Serbia/Yugoslavia where Milosevic is the central, but far from exclusive, focus.

Cohen treats primarily domestic politics, but also spends a fair amount of time on the foreign context, particularly in relation to Dayton and also the Kosovo conflict. He is particularly good on summarizing the levers of power and patrimonial methods used by Milosevic, and especially Serbian political culture--something of a favorite topic with Cohen--that helped to underpin Milosevic's rule. Cohen's cultural emphasis leads him to argue that some authoritarian social attitudes are likely to trouble, though not necessarily determine, Serbian politics after Milosevic's departure.

As much as I like the political-party level details available in Robert Thomas's _Politics of Serbia in the 1990s_ (especially on party origins), and the interesting political-cultural account in Eric Gordy's _The Culture of Power in Serbia_, Cohen does a better, more thorough job fleshing out the factional character of the Milosevic regime and its opposition, with more attention paid to basic features of political economy and analysis of social support for political players. It might be possible to improve on this book by touching up details and tightening particular arguments, but for an avowed case study speaking to larger questions, Cohen has raised the empirical and analytical bar impressively high.

Cohen's treatment of the Kosovo conflict is quite good in its details, but journalist Tim Judah's book on Kosovo is better on the genealogy and players of Albanian military and political groups and the negotiations at Rambouillet and during the war. For laypeople, Cohen also gives an excellent thumbnail sketch of debates over the character of nationalism, and concrete policy outcomes in the Balkans as a result of the debate. He does not, however, really clarify to what extent nationalism on any side should be tolerated and respected, preferring instead to warn the West in general terms to be "open-minded" and "pragmatic" of the complexities behind myths and national aspirations. It's a plea for comprehension first, but short on policy specifics, which, in retrospect, is perhaps not such a bad thing.

The only other flaw I have to mention is the repeated and distracting spelling errors [e.g., "loosing" for losing] and somewhat less frequent syntactical / grammatical mistakes peppered throughout. Considering how hard it is for all of us to edit our own copy after months of staring at monitors, the fault lies with copy editors who are paid not to rely solely on their spell-checkers and who might have tinkered in mistaken directions with the original copy.

This book is fairly smoothly written, although perhaps somewhat dense for non-academics. As of this writing, you'll be hard pressed to find a better account of Milosevic's Serbia, and I count it as a good reference and analytic help in my own research on Serbia compared to her neighbors. I'd give it 4.5 stars if I could, but I'm happy to round it up to 5 because it'll be awhile before anyone tops Cohen's accomplishment.

Average customer rating:

Well written, poorly sourced, and self-serving

The land of Demons

My comment from old Europe

Sobering, Thoughtful Look at Milosevic's Political Career

Mr. Sell is a master of Eastern Europe

Slobodan Milosevic and the Destruction of Yugoslavia
Louis Sell , and Louis Sell
Manufacturer: Duke University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Yugoslavia: A Concise History: Revised and Updated Edition

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Serpent in the Bosom: The Rise and Fall of Slobodan Milosevic

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ASIN: 0822328550

Book Description

In Slobodan Milosevic and the Destruction of Yugoslavia former U.S. foreign service officer Louis Sell fills a gap in the literature on the Yugoslav conflicts by covering both the domestic Yugoslav side of the collapse and the history and consequences of international interventions in the wars in Slovenia and Croatia in 1991, Bosnia in 1992–1995, and Kosovo from 1998–1999. Sell focuses on the life and career of Milosevic, from the perspective of both a diplomatic insider intimately familiar with the region and a scholar who has researched all the available English and Serbo-Croatian sources.
Sell spent much of his diplomatic career in Eastern Europe and Russia, including eight years in Yugoslavia between 1974 and 2000, and witnessed the events that contributed to the dissolution and ultimate destruction of Yugoslavia. In Slobodan Milosevic and the Destruction of Yugoslavia he provides first-hand observations of Milosevic from the heady days of his rise to power and, later, in the endgame of the Bosnian war, including the Dayton Peace Conference. Drawing on a wide range of published material as well as interviews with Yugoslav and foreign participants, Sell covers such areas as Milosevic’s relationship to the military, his responsibility for war crimes, his methods of persuasion and negotiation, and his notoriously explosive personality.

Customer Reviews:

Well written, poorly sourced, and self-serving.......2007-09-21

This book is worth checking out from the library, but I wouldn't buy it.

The book is well written and easy to read. I have to give Mr. Sell credit. He is a very talented writer, which is why I gave the book two stars rather than one.

Unfortunately, the book is poorly documented (there are a conspicuous lack of end notes for this sort of a book) and the author frequently writes as though he had privlaged access to Slobodan Milosevic's thoughts and feelings. Mr. Sell may have been an "insider" with the State Dept., but I don't think he was clairvoyant.

It is important to keep the author's position in mind when reading this book. He was a U.S. foreign Service officer serving in Yugoslavia. He was there to advance U.S. Government policy in the region. The real point of the book seems to be to justify the policies of the United States with regard to Yugoslavia.

This book may be valuable as an insight into the thinking that prevailed within the State Department, but it is not an impartial or even accurate assessment of the events that led to the destruction of Yugoslavia.

The land of Demons.......2003-12-30

Louis Sell describes this place like he was born there. I can just imagine how beautiful this country was before the Balkan wars. How can such a peacefull Country turn to The Land of Demons. After Titos death Yugoslavia slowly began to fall apart. It used to be one country before Titos death, but after his death and after Milosevic there was six.

My comment from old Europe.......2003-02-07

Although the facts and the personality of Milosevic are properly described, the book is, in my opinion, too partial. I don't think it is lack of knowledge but the will to believe it that way.
This eternal dichotomy of "good boys and bad boys" that in America is so much extended, appears very strongly in this book, specially when the role of the USA is concerned.Too simple,I must say.
Let's say that it is a good book to be red in America...

Sobering, Thoughtful Look at Milosevic's Political Career.......2002-12-07

How does a political hack working for the Yugoslavian Communist party evolve into a skilled manipulator of people, and Europe's worst Fascist politician since Adolf Hitler? In the case of Slobodan Milosevic there are no easy answers, yet former diplomat Louis Sell offers a riveting account of Milosevic's life that depicts the latter's transformation from Communist bureaucrat to a dangerous political demagogue. Along the way Sell provides an in-depth look at the rise and fall of modern Yugoslavia, beginning with the closing phases of World War Two, as Tito's Communist partisans battled both the Nazis and other forces belonging collectively to the Yugoslavian "underground", most notably the Serbian Chetniks. Sell suggests that Milosevic hasn't become a rabid nationalist, but instead, has used the cause of Serbian nationalism to further his own political agenda, granting him virtual control over the rump state of Yugoslavia until his sudden downfall in free elections held after the NATO bombing of Serbia in response to the Serb-Albanian conflict in Kosovo. Sell introduces us to a fascinating group of characters, beginning with Croatian president Tudjman, and ending with the likes of American diplomats and soldiers such as Richard Holbrooke and General Wesley Clark. Unquestionably this may be the best book published yet on what transpired in Yugoslavia during the 1990's.

Mr. Sell is a master of Eastern Europe.......2002-05-26

Mr.Sell was my professor at the University of Maine at Farminton, and he was incredibly knowledgeable on the conflict in Yugoslavia. I recommend this book to anyone interested in the region and the conflicts that have gone on there. Sells experience is reflected in this writings and is a must for any political science or international relations student.

Milosevic and Markovic : A Lust for Power

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Another Serb nationalist
The inside story

Milosevic and Markovic : A Lust for Power
Slavoljub Ukic , and Slavoljub Djukic
Manufacturer: McGill-Queen's University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Book Description

Although there have been many attempts to tell Slobodan Miloševic's story, Miloševic and Markovic is the first book to shows us the real person. Originally written in Serbo-Croatian by a Yugoslav journalist and driven underground in its native country, Miloševic and Markovic offers a first-hand account of Miloševic's life, including the recent events in Kosovo. Slavoljub Djukic sheds light on Miloševic's autocratic rule, showing how he, with his wife, Mira Markovic, has dominated Serbia's political life for the last twelve years - first as president of Serbia and later as president of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY).

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Another Serb nationalist.......2001-10-30

Moderate Serb nationalism is the consolation prize one expects when looking for dissent from that camp. When a Serb author shows a willingness to be the first to stop making excuses and to disavow fully genocidal Serb nationalism (what a hard thing to do!) that we will have a book worth reading. This isn't it.

The inside story.......2001-07-04

If you want some insight into the psyche of that pugnacious and obnoxious defendent at the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia, this is the book to read. Slavoljub Djukic, a respected Serbian journalist, has been following the career of Slobodan Milosevic (as well as his wife Mirjana Markovic) since the rise of this dull communist functionary to national prominence in the late 1980s. Djukic researched his subject meticulously, and made good use of his many contacts in Serbian/Yugoslav political and media circles, to say nothing of his keen powers of observation over the last 10+ years. There are vivid descriptions of the personalities of both Milosevic and Markovic, whose influence on her husband was/is legendary. Djukic also provides a wealth of information on many other important figures in Serbian politics over the course of the last decade, from Milosevic's many accomplices and yes-men to opposition leaders. Another valuable, but more indirect, aspect of this book is that it provides some insight into the views of moderate Serb nationalists (like Djukic) who greatly opposed Milosevic's regime. This is essential reading for a better understanding of Serbian politics and recent Serbian history - although I suspect a new, updated edition is in the works given Milosevic's imprisonment and subsequent, very recent extradition to the Hague.

The Rants, Raves and Thoughts of Slobodan Milosevic: The Dictator in His Own Words and Those of Others

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The Rants, Raves and Thoughts of Slobodan Milosevic: The Dictator in His Own Words and Those of Others

Manufacturer: On Your Own Publications
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Book Description

The Rants, Raves & Thoughts of Slobodan Milosevic is the latest title in a brand new series of thoughtful, and thought-provoking titles dealing with some of the less appealing dictators and terrorists of our time. The goals and inspirations of this new series on the modern world's terrorists and dictators is to explain, in their own words and in the words of others, what makes them so ruthless. The books demonstrate what a talented group of free-thinking writers and graphic designers can do with access to a database of information and a limitless imagination about how to let the words of these powerful, psychotic people reveal who they are, what they believe and what they hope to achieve. The Rants, Raves & Thoughts of Slobodan Milosevic lets you step inside the head of this Yugoslavian dictator, from his views on NATO, Serbia, his trial, and America.

Death of a Dictator; Good riddance to Milosevic--and to Saddam, too.(Obituary) : An article from: The Weekly Standard

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Death of a Dictator; Good riddance to Milosevic--and to Saddam, too.(Obituary) : An article from: The Weekly Standard
Stephen Schwartz , and William Kristol
Manufacturer: Thomson Gale
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital

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Book Description

This digital document is an article from The Weekly Standard, published by Thomson Gale on March 27, 2006. The length of the article is 1628 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Death of a Dictator; Good riddance to Milosevic--and to Saddam, too.(Obituary)
Author: Stephen Schwartz
Publication: The Weekly Standard (Magazine/Journal)
Date: March 27, 2006
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 11 Issue: 26 Page: NA

Article Type: Obituary

Distributed by Thomson Gale

Izmedu slave i anateme: Politicka biografija Slobodana Milosevica (Biblioteka Posebnih izdanja)

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Izmedu slave i anateme: Politicka biografija Slobodana Milosevica (Biblioteka Posebnih izdanja)
Slavoljub Dukic
Manufacturer: Filip Visnjic
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

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ASIN: 8673631386

Outcast Europe - The Balkans 1789-1989: From the Ottomans to Milosevic

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Outcast Europe - The Balkans 1789-1989: From the Ottomans to Milosevic
Tom Gallagher
Manufacturer: Harwood Academic Pub
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 9058231690

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