Balkan Inferno: Betrayal, War and Intervention 1990-2005

by Wes Johnson

From the final
 
…at an Athens cocktail party in the fall of 2003 a young officer from the US embassy said that his first assignment, in 1993-4, had been Tirana, “We could do anything we wanted. In fact, they would like to be our fifty-first state. All the stuff was coming in right out at the international airport.” The “stuff” he was referring to, I knew, was shorthand for military equipment. Then, he quickly moved to another subject while I took in the breathtaking implications of his remarks. It meant that long before Kosovo had gotten out of hand, and had broken into armed conflict, the US was fomenting and actively supporting revolt in the province—the US bears major responsibility for much of what followed, including the war and its unending tragic aftermath.

600 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2006

Reviews

[Robin · Rating 1 out of 5]

If a negative review was possible, this book would receive it. Did it have an editor? Was it checked for logical flow and content? It was as if the author's brain vomited all over the desk, a desk that was already littered with old newspapers, coffee grinds, leftover food, discarded scabs and festering gym socks. Then the entire pile of offal was shoveled into a payless shoe box and marketed as an intellectual product.

[Matthew · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book and couldn't put it down. I enjoyed the casual way the information was dispensed. It is basically written in the style of the diary of a reporter with a little sidetracking to explain the history and politics behind different events. The author traveled though the Balkans while everything was becoming unraveled. He spoke about his travels while conversing with various people on his journey, then put it all together with some historical explanations. There is a lot of author's opinion in this book, but I looked at this read as an opportunity to gain a different perspective on these events than what was reported on the news and in the papers.

[Shelly · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book has a very pro-Serb slant. Croatians are portrayed as Fascist and Slovenia is deemed so insignificant that it doesn't even receive it's own dedicated chapter. The flow and structure of the book is confusing and difficult to follow. There are many wonderful books about Yugoslavia, don't waste time on this one!