Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian, a Grammar: With Sociolinguistic Commentary
by Ronelle Alexander
from University of Wisconsin Press
· 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
Peace at Any Price: How the World Failed Kosovo (Crises in World Politics)
by Iain King
from Cornell University Press
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.
With Their Backs to the World: Portraits from Serbia
by Asne Seierstad
from Basic Books
The Serbs: History, Myth and the Destruction of Yugoslavia, Second Edition (Yale Nota Bene)
by Tim Judah
from Yale University Press
The recent war in Bosnia re-ignited ancient hatreds and led to acts of brutality that echoed World War II atrocities: large-scale massacres and "ethnic cleansing". Bosnian Serbs, aided by Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic, systematically murdered, raped, and terrorized Bosnian Muslims as they strove to create a Greater Serbia. Now, journalist Tim Judah provides some perspective on the horrors of the Bosnian conflict with The Serbs. Make no mistake, Judah is not an apologist for Serbian excesses; rather, he aims to explicate the Balkans' long and violent history leading to this latest tragic conflict.
The Serbs begins with the establishment of a Serbian state in the Middle Ages, then follows Serb fortunes through ensuing centuries of conquest, conflict, and oppression. Ethnic cleansing in the Balkans is hardly unique to the Bosnian war; it has been a horrific element of all Balkan conflicts, and Judah convincingly argues that Serbian nationalism is an outgrowth of the Serbs' own sufferings as victims of ethnic cleansing in past conflicts. Anyone interested in current affairs--particularly in the Balkans--will find Tim Judah's The Serbs an engrossing and important exploration of the Bosnian conflict.
This wide-ranging, scholarly, and highly readable account opens with the windswept fortresses of medieval kings and a battle lost more than six centuries ago that still profoundly influences the Serbs. Judah describes the idea of "Serbdom" that sustained them during centuries of Ottoman rule, the days of glory during the First World War, and the genocide against them during the Second. He examines the tenuous ethnic balance fashioned by Tito and its unraveling after his death. And he reveals how Slobodan Milosevic, later to become president, used a version of history to drive his people to nationalist euphoria. Judah details the way Milosevic prepared for war and provides gripping eyewitness accounts of wartime horrors: the burning villages and "ethnic cleansing," the ignominy of the siege of Sarajevo, and the columns of bedraggled Serb refugees, cynically manipulated and then abandoned once the dream of a Greater Serbia was lost.
This first in-depth account of life behind Serbian lines is not an apologia but a scrupulous explanation of how the people of a modernizing European state could become among the most reviled of the century. Rejecting the stereotypical image of a bloodthirsty nation, Judah makes the Serbs comprehensible by placing them within the context of their history and their hopes.
Kosovo: War and Revenge
by Tim Judah
from Yale University Press
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
This is a revealing account of how Kosovo became the crucible of one of the twentieth century's most poisonous ethnic conflicts. Written by a seasoned journalist who witnessed the Balkan conflagration and its aftermath, the book presents a gripping analysis of the origins of the Serb-Albanian conflict, the course of the battle, the issues and personalities, and options for the future. In this second edition Tim Judah updates the story to, and beyond, the fall of Milosevic.
Black Aces High: The Story of a Modern Fighter Squadron at War
by Robert K. Wilcox
from St. Martin's Paperbacks
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...
To Kill a Nation: The Attack on Yugoslavia
by Michael Parenti
from Verso
Drawing on a wide range of unpublished material and observations gathered from his visit to Yugoslavia in 1999, Michael Parenti challenges mainstream media coverage of the war, uncovering hidden agendas behind the Western talk of genocide, ethnic cleansing, and democracy.
For seventy-eight days, in 1999, US and NATO forces launched round-the-clock aerial attacks against Yugoslavia, dropping 20,000 tons of bombs and killing upwards of three thousand people in the name of humanitarianism. Among those who could not help noticing the gap between action and words was Michael Parenti. Drawing on a wide range of unpublished material and observations gathered from his visit to Yugoslavia in 1999, he challenges mainstream media coverage of the war and uncovers hidden agendas behind the Western talk of "genocide", "ethnic cleansing", and "democracy" To Kill a Nation reveals a decade-long disinformation campaign waged by Western leaders and NATO officials in their pursuit of free-market reforms. This continues, Parenti shows, as industrial and ecological destruction wrought by the war last year helps the West to destabilize Montenegro and Vojvodina today.
The Myth of Ethnic War: Serbia And Croatia in the 1990s
by V. P., Jr. Gagnon
from Cornell University Press
Kosovo: A Short History
by Noel Malcolm
from Harper Perennial
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
"Malcolm's narrative is gripping, even brilliant at times. . . . He takes to his task with the vigor of a detective driven by true passion. At times his claims are, in terms of Balkan history,quite revolutionary."
Realm of the Black Mountain: A History of Montenegro
by Elizabeth Roberts
from Cornell University Press
Comparatively little is well known about Europe's newest and one of its smallest independent states: the small mountain fastness Montenegro. In a book written for specialists and general readers alike, Elizabeth Roberts traces its history from pre-Slavic times, including its part in the 1389 battle of Kosovo and its prominent role in resisting the Ottomans. She recounts Montenegro's development under its Prince-Bishops toward the independence achieved at the Congress of Berlin and lost after the Versailles Conference when the Podgorica Assembly voted to join the new Kingdom of Yugoslavia. When Slobodan Milosevic spoke of Montenegro and Serbia as "two eyes in the same head," he encapsulated a view that has deep roots in both nations. But not all Montenegrins agreed, and many chafed at being forced to play the role of Serbia's junior partner. Indeed, Montenegro's complex and shifting cultural and political identity is the main theme of Roberts's witty and dispassionate book, which culminates in Montenegro's defining referendum and subsequent international recognition in the summer of 2006.
The history of Montenegro is at once a colorful, often bloodily violent story and instructive about how land, religion, and politics (both domestic and international) have intersected over centuries to shape and reshape cultural identities in Southeastern Europe. Students of national identity have much to learn from the Montenegrin case, and general readers will be enthralled by the dramatic tale that unfolds in Realm of the Black Mountain.
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