Customer Reviews

Fools Rush In: A True Story of War and Redemption

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

After he dashes through Sniper Alley in Sarajevo during the Bosnian war, dodging bullets to visit with two teenage girls who have invited him into their home, the author states that he has done so to see through the eyes of others, to feel their feelings, to live their experience.
Bill Carter has artfully recreated his experience during the war and saved us the danger and risk he was willing to take on our behalf. He is no crusader, he has no poltical axe to grind (in fact, he's unsure of the sides and their positions when he first enters Bosnia), he's simply a caring, passionate human being who enlists the help of Irish rock band U2 to spread the message of Peace and Love.
This is a great book, a story of a lost love tempered with an adventure few of us would have the courage to undertake (including me).

This is definitely one of the best books I have read this year. Once I started it I could not put it down. Bill Carter gives an excellent account of his personal journey that takes him into war-torn B-H, and tells a well-rounded story that obviously comes from the heart. No political grandstanding-- you can identify with the point of view of this normal, adventurous guy who has the courage (and initial naivety) to inject himself into a surreal world where people are trying to continue living the best they can in the midst of destruction and death. Fascinating account of his interaction with U2, and the resulting broadcasts on the world's stage of real human beings trapped inside the insanity of war. And mixed in is his own struggle with personal loss that leaves him empty but leads him into a situation that ultimately puts everything in perspective. He magnificently weaves all these elements together for an overall balanced, engaging narrative. After reading, I also watched Carter's Miss Sarajevo documentary which superbly complements the book.

FOOLS RUSH IN by Bill Carter is a memoir of the siege of Sarajevo by an American who voluntarily went there to help the Bosnians victimized by the Serbian aggressors.

Carter had recently lost a girlfriend suddenly in a car accident, and he was looking for something to do to get away from his grief. He went to the Balkans, where he had a friend working for an aid organization in Split, Croatia. He couldn't get an "official" job in Bosnia, during the war, so he joined The Serious Road Trip, a group of internationals, who drove brightly painted trucks and cars and delivered food aid to beseiged people while juggling and clowning for the kids. Carter's main friend in the narrative is Graeme, who utters some funny Brit black humor in the course of the surreal events of the memoir. ("Easy there, Spam," will forever be part of my ideolect.)

Carter essentially moves to Sarajevo, and stays in an office tower near the front lines, the Unis Towers. He tells of the daily hardships of living with no sure supply of water, food, gas, electric along with having to move through the city ever-aware of snipers. The Serious Road Trip delivered food to different groups around the city, mostly based on interpersonal relationships the members of TSRT developed. For example, Carter meets two sisters who lead him on a run across Sniper Alley (they accused him of being a "war tourist") to their apartment, which they couldn't leave once the siege began until their father dug a tunnel out of the building, as the main exit faced the Serb-occupied hills. In the family's apartment, Carter feels guilt over enjoying the hospitality they offer him. He can see from their faces and bodyies that they are slowly starving, but they are all amazed when they find a bullet in the flour he was carrying in the box of groceries he was taking to them as he ran across Sniper Alley. He watches a video with the family of a birthday party, and in the video, as they celebrate, a bullet comes through the window and lodges in the wall. After the instant of the shot, the family recovers and continues the celebration. After showing the video, the mother tells Carter, "Our first bullet."

It is unreal and inhumane moments like this that are best illustrated in Carter's narrative. Much of the last half of the book deals with Carter's idea to get U2 to publicize the problems in Sarajevo because of the siege. (The UN brought in food for those trapped in the city, but the Serbs wouldn't allow it to be delivered unless they got 40 percent of it themselves. The UN troops also kept Sarajevans in the city, not allowing them to connect with the free Bosnian territory just beyond the UN controlled airport.) The U2 aspect was interesting, and illustrated how the world came to be outraged about what was happening to Bosnians, but it was less interesting than the small moments so well depicted by Carter's intimacy with the lives of Sarajevans but colored by his "foreigner's" view, as an American. His stranger's view of the situation allows him to voice his moral outrage, but his intimate experience with the city's horrors, and his own hardships because of it, allow him that outrage, legitimize it.

The thing I didn't like about the book is an aspect of Carter's personality that I term (borrowing from organizational communication) "low elimination breakpoint." Carter seems to be better than everything, or at least everything around him has intolerable flaws. Aid organizations are too bureaucratic, so he won't work with them. Even though he works in film and makes a documentary of the hardships in Sarajevo during the siege, working in film is also not good enough for him. Etc. I found some of the writing overwrought (he was the most in love of any person ever in love, for example). He seems to morally eschew attention for his work in Bosnia, but then is offended when he doesn't get what he thinks is his fair share.

One of the most moving and upsetting moments in the narrative is when TSRT is trying to get out of Bosnia to collect supplies and stays with a Muslim family in a town after the Croats have turned on their Muslim allies against the Serbs. Carter and his colleagues know the town they're in is about to be ethnically cleansed, and the family they're staying with will be victims of that cleansing. There is a teen-age boy in the family who tells them it isn't their war, and Carter thinks, whose war is it?" A boy's war? People who didn't cause it, but are about to be killed en masse because of their Turkish sounding names? TSRT can leave the town, but the people with whom they've stayed cannot. Again, it's the intimacy and humanity of the encounter that make the impression. Carter later hears that the people of the town who could flee tied handicapped and sick people to their beds and fled the genocidal murderers by running into the woods. That's all he knows of the family who sheltered him...

I bought this book at an English-language bookstore in Sarajevo, so it was richer to read about such places as Sniper Alley, the Holiday Inn, the Old Town, the tunnel the Bosnian forces used to get supplies and soldiers into and out of Sarajevo after having seen them myself. It's a good book and serves as an effective companion to the historical and political reportage that exists on the war. I recommend it.

I have just finished reading this book. It is so well written and makes you really think about the world and life from so many different levels. The author so effectively weaves in his personal story of love and childhood and how those experiences shape his decisions during a war that is so mis-understood. He really makes you think with messages about love, tragedy, personal motivations and emotions that sometimes are ironically subtle based on the intense subject matter. A definite read!!!

This book is a little on the outdated side but the story it tells is very much contemporary. The author definitely has a heart and an ear for what went around him. Not an easy read, at times, due to the graphic nature and reality of what he experienced, he still makes the reader want to plunge in willingly for one thing he is not is boring. I guess the biggest message is about the spirit of people to rise above an horrendous situation and keep on existing regardless of the brutal state of things. When a book is able to reach and touch a chord in the reader's heart I consider that book a success. This book does that in spades but I refrain from allocating 5 Stars for there are moments where it may (at least to me it appeared to) lag somewhat, so there goes my reason for 4 Stars but I would probably given it a 4.5 if allowed by the set up in amazon. In many instances I felt truly bad for the people in Sarajevo and their cruel reality and once again left with no doubt that men are the most evil creation in earth, for who would imagine a place such as this without condemning the very essence of man? Surely genocide is not limited to this place in time for if history has taught us anything is that the same as there are caring individuals (where the writer of this book certainly qualifies as) there is unlimited evil to be had, all of it, I supposed, justified in their deranged minds to the point that whole nations undergo a transformation so horrid one can not help but to wonder how can they even sleep at night. This book attracted me by the photograph in which a child is going to school while carrying in the open a gun. A person that lives a sheltered life and seldom encounters realities so devastating as the one that took place in Sarajevo will never be able to understand until they take the time to inform themselves, and in that sense this book shines. I have been always told that in every dark period of mankind's history there has always been a shining light to counter. These shinning lights is what keeps us floating safely in this sea of sanity we like to call the civilized world. Americans are known around the world for being bold, outspoken but most important, a caring people. Not the organized government, perhaps, but the individuals of this great nation and this writer, it appears to me, is a case in point. Written from the heart, from the trenches, from a desire to have something to be proud of Fools Rush In: A True Story of War and Redemption is exactly that. Thanks God for these individuals who never wavered and go out of their way to assist those who need it the most, regardless of their demographic boundaries or their beliefs. Today, with the state of this world, I only wish I could be a little more of a giver than a taker, for I am convinced in the end, when the final bell tolls, only the memories of significance will appease the weary and will open wide the entrance where that special group of people, the givers of this world, those who give in small and greater ways, mingle together, satisfied that when they were here on this earth they put in their two cents worth to make this world a better one. 4.5 Stars and shining ones at that!

I have avoided Amazon reviews until now. This book deserves all the praise it gets. I can't really think of another book I've read that has moved me so much. This book is an amazing, true personal account of one man's experiences during the Bosnian war. It balances his quest for purpose and meaning after painful loss with revealing, compassionate portraits of the people impacted by the tragic Bosnian war. It shows, too, that one person can really make a positive difference in the world. I only put it down when I had to. The story of getting Bono and U2 involved was definitely a bonus, but did not overshadow the telling of what it was like for innocent civilians to live in a war zone. It is relevant on many different levels for today, and I encourage everyone to read it.

A non-contrived story about a man who wanders into the hell of a complicated war and turns his grief and despair into a passionate cause. The day to day stories of people, including the author, trying to find some sort of way to live through chaos. I couldn't put it down though I knew he would survive (first person writing) and often felt the deep emotion that came from his own personal tragedy. The clown troupe was sort of a black humor release for so much horror. Even the backstage workings of U2 and their handlers was written with insight and creativity.

his book is for everyone, really, from high school on. There are those that won't love it as much as others - that might find it too gory or violent or too difficult to deal with Bill himself, but overall everyone will take something away from this book.

Before I go into anything else, I want to preface by saying that I absolutely ADORED this book. I laughed, I cried, I hated Bill Carter, I loved Bill Carter, I felt inspired, I felt like I never wanted to leave my room again,. . .basically, I went through the gambit of possible emotions and was in no way left unscathed by this book.

Normally, I like to write my review for a book immediately after reading it. I don't want to give myself time to forget how the book made me feel, to forget the things about the characters that I loved and hated, or to start nit-picking about things that didn't ACTUALLY matter to me while reading the book. When I finished this book, though, there was no way that I could immediately review it.

I was still too engrossed with the war in Bosnia (which I horrifyingly previously knew absolutely nothing about) - with the horrors of the reality of what happened there while the rest of the world was left completely in the dark. I couldn't focus on the book itself, in which I learned the truths of this war, while in my head I was still living in the war. Was it his words that affected me so much, or was it merely the truths about which he wrote that had me so worked up?

And then, well, I just couldn't help myself. I needed to nit-pick. I felt like I couldn't get my feelings straight about this book until I really understood what would make a typical American (though I think I can very firmly state that Bill Carter is not your typical American), even one as torn-up and love sick as Bill Carter, to willingly head into war-torn Bosnia just for the heck of it. And then stay long enough for it to make sense for him to say. The staying I got, but the original entry, I think, is best explained by the title, "Fools Rush In."

And so, now, one month after the reading, I can finally say that I loved this book. Bill Carter writes about his experiences with the war with such straight-forwardness and honesty that I think it would be hard to do otherwise (unless you're one of those people that can't stop focusing on the fact that Bill Carter can be a bit of a jerk). His experiences are experienced that need to be shared, and even after the fact, I think it is important that people hear what he has to say about what he went through, voluntarily, if only to remind us that sometimes the obvious choice is not always the best choice. This book will shake you up, it will scare you, and it will, hopefully make you realize that you shouldn't take for granted everything you have. Especially when you sit back and remember that everything you are reading is real.

So, a big thanks to Bill Carter for sharing such a moving, heart-wrenching story with us, and doing it in such a comprehensible, enjoyable (if painful) way. Don't be fooled by the title like I was. "Fools Rush In" made me sure that the focus would be more on Carter's lost love than on the war, but I was wrong. The focus was on love, but in a very different way than I ever would have expected. Now, go get yourself a copy of this book and do what you do best - READ!

I am from Bosnia. I survived that horrible war. After I first heard about the book, I wanted to see how the war was seen from the perspective of a yooung american man. Bill Carter menaged to describe to a single detail everything that happened in Sarajevo under the seige! I was deeply touched by the book, because it reminded me on my own case. So, I would recoommend it to anyone who wants to know how a strong will and patience and persistancy of a one man made a diffrenece in lives of people of the olympic city of Sarajevo!

My college roommate and I heard Bill Carter speak. The lecture inspired us to buy and read his book. For months, that was all we could talk about and it changed our lives. I have since bought this book for many people.