Belgrade: Among the Serbs [Hardcover]

Florence Levinsohn (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1566630614 | ISBN-13: 978-1566630610 | Publication Date: September 1, 1994

The murderous war in Yugoslavia brings a daily round of revulsion, with the world's press fixed on the Serbs as children of darkness. "A valiant and warlike race," Churchill called the Serbs. Certainly their reputation for war has stuck. But as Florence Levinsohn finds in this penetrating look at the Balkan conflict, the Serbs are complex and often misunderstood. During an intensive stay in Belgrade, Ms. Levinsohn talked with a cross-section of Serbian intellectuals and absorbed the mood of a city enduring a draconian UN embargo. In Belgrade she unpeels the many layers of confusion, despair, cynicism, anger, and yearning felt by Serbs living under a government they neither understand nor endorse, but feel hopeless to unseat. She finds a proud people involved with a war for which they have no sympathy and only long for an end. There is, Ms. Levinsohn concludes, enough guilt in this conflict to satisfy Serbs, Croatians, and Muslims alike, and a great measure of misdirected policy in the West. As she shows, the roots of the war lie in the political exploitation of ethnic and religious hatreds by the leaders of the several groups. Belgrade is a mind-changing book about the bitterest conflict to come out of the end of the Cold War.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this rare attempt to convey the Serbian side in the Bosnian war, freelance journalist Levinsohn (Harold Washington: A Political Biography) restricts herself mostly to interviewing Belgrade's prominent intellectuals, providing a platform for their views on the breakup of the former Yugoslavia, the Serbian leadership, the effects of the UN embargo and the local black-market economy. She explores the Serbs' strong sense of victimhood, which is based on centuries of oppression, and her overriding aim is to counter the prevailing Western view of the Serbs as primitive and murderous. But one wishes she had spent more time talking with "the others." Citing no documentation, Levinsohn claims to have learned from an unimpeachable source that the Bosnian Muslims and Croats each paid the American PR firm Ruder Finn $30,000 a month to publicize their side of the war.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

American journalist Levinsohn traveled to Belgrade in fall 1993 to investigate the human dimension to the civil war in what was once Yugoslavia. She met with a "highly educated group of intellectuals ...most of whom could nevertheless make no sense of what had happened to them in the last few years." From these conversations-with lawyers, doctors, judges, writers, government officials, philosophers, and painters-she has woven a rich and complex tapestry that sheds some light on the Serbian character. Besides offering insightful glimpses of everyday life in Belgrade, Levinsohn includes useful historical and political explanations for the current situation. This fascinating and depressing book intimately reveals the political and military aspects of the crisis. A highly recommended addition to the literature of post-Communist Eastern Europe.
Thomas A. Karel, Franklin & Marshall Coll. Lib., Lancaster, Pa.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Ivan R Dee (September 1, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1566630614
• ISBN-13: 978-1566630610
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.3 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,708,961 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #7 in Books > Education & Reference > Dictionaries & Thesauruses > Foreign Language > Serbo-Croatian
  • #60 in Books > Education & Reference > Foreign Languages > Serbo-Croatian

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Peek into Belgrade, May 29, 2002

By 

Dr. Ohio "pppmntgrl" (Cleveland, Ohio United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Belgrade: Among the Serbs (Hardcover)

I would've titled this "A Peek into Serbia" but Levinsohn's description of life in Belgrade v. the rest of more rural Serbia was a surprise to me, as was much of the material in this book. A flowing descripteur, Levinsohn transports us to the dusty but beautiful capital of the former Yugoslavia, and allows tainted Western minds to experience the life of a passionate country and culture, one quite unlike any Americans have ever experienced on paper. The politics of the novel can get complicated, especially since the book is nearing ten years old, and the speculations as to whether or not Milosevic will go to trial in the Hague are tedious to readers, since he has already been there several months. In any case, this book was terrific, and I would recommend it to anyone looking to better understand the mentality of Serbians. Her view of Serbs as "victims with a certain victim mentality" was quite refreshing when splashed against the Western view of Serbs as the guilty party of the war in Yugoslavia and it's casualties. The most appreciated part of this book was Levinsohn's desire to get to the heart of the split of Yugoslavia, and to try to lift some of the intense blame placed on Serbians. In my eyes, she has shed some light onto the matter, more than I can say CNN ever did.

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Among the Serbs Not Of The Serbs, March 15, 2000

By 

Jeanie Pavichevich - See all my reviews

This review is from: Belgrade: Among the Serbs (Hardcover)

I read the book just after it was published and missed an opportunity to speak with the author at an appearance she made in Chicago. My only criticism is that the questions the author poses about the Serbian people and their situation during the war are never answered. I was waiting for some insight about the situation and some perspectives on solutions to the political problems in Belgrade. Nothing was answered or ever raised. We simply get a diary of small vignettes. If she really did meet all those people, I'm surprised that the author didn't have an answer to the question she posed about the Serbian people and their mindset. I sent her a note inviting her to research some of the writings by Bishop Nikolai Velimirovich, a Serbian Bishop, and survivor of the Holocaust. His take on the Serbian people, their faith and their tenacity would have explained everything to her. "The Serbs will choose the difficult road because it is the right one, the Christian one."

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars You've found the right book!, March 12, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Belgrade: Among the Serbs (Hardcover)

I could not stop reading this great Levinsohn's work. She got the point. I felt in love with her style of writting.