Black Lamb and Grey Falcon (Penguin Classics)
by Rebecca West
from Penguin Classics
Part travelogue, part history, part love letter on a thousand-page scale, Rebecca West's Black Lamb and Grey Falcon is a genre-bending masterwork written in elegant prose. But what makes it so unlikely to be confused with any other book of history, politics, or culture--with, in fact, any other book--is its unashamed depth of feeling: think The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire crossed with Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. West visited Yugoslavia for the first time in 1936. What she saw there affected her so much that she had to return--partly, she writes, because it most resembled "the country I have always seen between sleeping and waking," and partly because "it was like picking up a strand of wool that would lead me out of a labyrinth in which, to my surprise, I had found myself immured." Black Lamb is the chronicle of her travels, but above all it is West following that strand of wool: through countless historical digressions; through winding narratives of battles, slavery, and assassinations; through Shakespeare and Augustine and into the very heart of human frailty.
West wrote on the brink of World War II, when she was "already convinced of the inevitability of the second Anglo-German war." The resulting book is colored by that impending conflict, and by West's search for universals amid the complex particulars of Balkan history. In the end, she saw the region's doom--and our own--in a double infatuation with sacrifice, the "black lamb and grey falcon" of her title. It's the story of Abraham and Isaac without the last-minute reprieve: those who hate are all too ready to martyr the innocent in order to procure their own advantage, and the innocent themselves are all too eager to be martyred. To West, in 1941, "the whole world is a vast Kossovo, an abominable blood-logged plain." Unfortunately, little has happened since then to prove her wrong. --Mary Park
Written on the brink of World War II, Rebecca WestÂ’s classic examination of the history, people, and politics of Yugoslavia illuminates a region that is still a focus of international concern. A magnificent blend of travel journal, cultural commentary, and historical insight, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon probes the troubled history of the Balkans and the uneasy relationships among its ethnic groups. The landscape and the people of Yugoslavia are brilliantly observed as West untangles the tensions that rule the countryÂ’s history as well as its daily life.
The Forgotten 500: The Untold Story of the Men Who Risked All For the Greatest Rescue Mission of World War II
by Gregory A. Freeman
from NAL Hardcover
An astonishing, never-before-told story of the Second World War, based on newly declassified documents and exclusive interviews.
In 1944 the OSS set out to recover more than 500 airmen trapped behind enemy lines in Yugoslavia. Classified for over half a century for political reasons, the full account of this unforgettable story of loyalty, self-sacrifice, and bravery is now being told for the first time.
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 Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society
by Arthur M. Schlesinger
from W. W. Norton & Company
In this updated version of a modern classic, acclaimed historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. strikes a blow against radical multiculturalism. The rising cult of ethnicity, he argues, threatens a common American identity, imperiling the civic ideals that traditionally have bonded immigrants into a nation. Various chapters criticize bilingual education, Afrocentrism, and the use of history as group therapy for minorities. Schlesinger raised eyebrows when he first published this book in 1992 because of his impeccable liberal credentials as a one-time assistant to President Kennedy and long-standing academic champion of FDR's New Deal. This new version contains all of the original volume's edge, plus a few extras, including an appendix containing "Schlesinger's Syllabus," 13 books "indispensable to an understanding of America." Titles from this eclectic list include The Federalist Papers, Tocqueville's Democracy in America, Uncle Tom's Cabin, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and Mencken's American Language. The Disuniting of America remains an essential book for readers interested in the American character as it enters the 21st century. --John J. Miller
The bestseller that reminded us what it means to be an American is more timely than ever in this updated and enlarged edition, including "Schlesinger's Syllabus," an annotated reading list of core books on the American experience. The classic image of the American nation-a melting pot in which differences of race, wealth, religion, and nationality are submerged in democracy-is being replaced by an orthodoxy that celebrates difference and abandons assimilation. While this upsurge in ethnic awareness has had many healthy consequences in a nation shamed by a history of prejudice, the cult of ethnicity, if pressed too far, threatens to fragment American society to a dangerous degree. Two-time Pulitzer Prize winner in history and adviser to the Kennedy and other administrations, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., is uniquely positioned to wave the caution flag in the race to a politics of identity. Using a broader canvas in this updated and expanded edition, he examines the international dimension and the lessons of one polyglot country after another tearing itself apart or on the brink of doing so: among them the former Yugoslavia, Nigeria, even Canada. Closer to home, he finds troubling new evidence that multiculturalism gone awry here in the United States threatens to do the same.
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.
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.
The Collapse of Yugoslavia 1991-1999 (Essential Histories)
by Alastair Finlan
from Osprey Publishing
In 1991, an ethnically diverse region that had enjoyed decades of peaceful coexistence descended into bitter hatred and chaos, almost overnight. Communities fractured along lines of ethnic and religious affiliation and the ensuing fighting was deeply personal, resulting in brutality, rape and torture, and ultimately the deaths of thousands of people. This book examines the internal upheavals of the former Yugoslavia and their international implications, including the failure of the Vance-Owen plan; the first use of NATO in a combat role and in peace enforcement; and the war in Kosovo, unsanctioned by the UN but prosecuted by NATO forces to prevent the ethnic cleansing of the region.
The Bridge Betrayed: Religion and Genocide in Bosnia (Comparative Studies in Religion and Society , No 11)
by Michael A. Sells
from University of California Press
The recent atrocities in Bosnia-Herzegovina have stunned people throughout the world. With Holocaust memories still painfully vivid, a question haunts us: how is this savagery possible? Michael A. Sells answers by demonstrating that the Bosnian conflict is not simply a civil war or a feud of age-old adversaries. It is, he says, a systematic campaign of genocide and a Christian holy war spurred by religious mythologies.
This passionate yet reasoned book examines how religious stereotyping--in popular and official discourse--has fueled Serbian and Croatian ethnic hatreds. Sells, who is himself Serbian American, traces the cultural logic of genocide to the manipulation by Serb nationalists of the symbolism of Christ's death, in which Muslims are "Christ-killers" and Judases who must be mercilessly destroyed. He shows how "Christoslavic" religious nationalism became a central part of Croat and Serbian politics, pointing out that intellectuals and clergy were key instruments in assimilating extreme religious and political ideas.
Sells also elucidates the ways that Western policy makers have rewarded the perpetrators of the genocide and punished the victims. He concludes with a discussion of how the multireligious nature of Bosnian society has been a bridge between Christendom and Islam, symbolized by the now-destroyed bridge at Mostar. Drawing on historical documents, unpublished United Nations reports, articles from Serbian and Bosnian media, personal contacts in the region, and Internet postings, Sells reveals the central role played by religious mythology in the Bosnian tragedy. In addition, he makes clear how much is at stake for the entire world in the struggle to preserve Bosnia's existence as a multireligious society.
The Serbs (The Peoples of Europe)
by Sima M. Cirkovic
from Wiley-Blackwell
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.
The Myth of Ethnic War: Serbia And Croatia in the 1990s
by V. P., Jr. Gagnon
from Cornell University Press
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