Customer Reviews

Love Thy Neighbor: A Story of War

5 star:		(38)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Peter Maass was a Washington Post correspondent in Bosnia 1992-93 and this is his riveting, emotive account of the war. Maass echoes many of us when he unashamedly asks the most difficult questions: Why did 250,000 Bosians lose their lives, why can't Muslims and Christians work their differences out after so long, why did genocide occur in Europe when at the end of WW II the world declared it would never happen again, why was the UN impotent once it got into Bosnia, why is the thin skin of civility easily torn and the brutality that lies beneath so easily provoked? Maass was not a cynical, hotel room hero that gives journalism a bad name, those hacks more interested in boasting in the bar and filing stories from second-hand accounts provided by local help-meets. He did his job well and came away shell-shocked, angry and fundamentally changed by what he saw: UN troops standing by while atrocities took place, how residents of Sarajevo nightly ran the gauntlet of the airport, surgeons operating without drugs, children dying on the daily water run, snipers on opposing sides chatting to one another on a two-way radio, the flourishing drug trade, people cheating, lying, killing and stealing to keep their loved ones alive. Maass speculates a little too much - some judicious editing wouldn't have gone astray - and he cannot adequately analyse the causes of the war and the outcomes for the victims involved but this was not his job anyway. He was there as a recorder of events that became a black mark in history and that he did, admirably. Maass, like veteran journalist Simon Winchester who succinctly wrote of the later crisis in Kosovo and asked similar questions, gave ordinary victims of this war a voice. While such journalistic accounts lack historical perspective because their focus is on the immediacy, their evidence is invaluable. We need such accounts, so when the spectre of genocide is raised again we can hold up books like these and say: "Haven't we learned anything yet?"

I would recommend this book to anyone interested in the modern Balkans, particularly the Serb aggression that began with the rise of Milosevic in the late 80's.

Love They Neighbor is a telling of Serbia's horrific war against Bosnia and Bosnia's Muslim population as seen firsthand by Mass while he was there. Maass begins this book with a journalistic attempt to remain impartial and simply tell what he sees, however, it soon becomes clear to him that the Serbs are the aggressors and the horror the Serbs are perpetrating against their Balkan brothers and sisters is something not seen since Hitler, Stalin, and Pol Pot. This book is not an impartial accounting of what was going on; it is an accounting of the atrocities that were perpetrated by the Serbs and tolerated by the West.

In my opinion, the best part of the book was Maass's detailing of how first the Bush administration and then the Clinton administration failed to take relatively easy measures to end the aggression. Maass also details how the U.N., instead of helping protect those being slaughtered actually implemented policies that helped the Serbs carry out their terror and ethnic cleansing. Maass tells the truth in this book, but the fact is telling the truth, in this case, can not leave one impartial.

Maass also explains thing that our cookie cutter modern new services do not explain; like how the Muslim's the Serbs were persecuting were not any more religiously extremist that your average American. One interesting moment Maass notes is when Clinton is dedicating the Holocaust museum, stating that the museum is a reminder that we can't let this happen again, while his administration, NATO, and the U.N. were actively letting it happen again.

I would recommend this book to anyone seeking to learn about recent events in the Balkans. While not an academic work, it is well-written and lends much insight into the failure of the West in quickly ending what would have been easily stoppable had they made the effort. I would also recommend this book to readers of Robert Young Pelton. If you take out the political commentary, one could easily see Pelton writing similar things about many of the situations that Maass experienced.

Mr. Maass writes an excellent book.

simply excellent.

He documents his time in the insane asylum that we called Bosnia in the early 90's. His writing is exceptional and the stories he tells are heartbreaking. Great books are either average writers who witness extrodinary events or extrodinary writers who witness average events. Maass is an extrodinary writer in an extrodinary situation.

This is the best book I have ever read of the Bosnian fiasco. As a former UN Peacekeeper it brought back old shivers and memories. Like anything people can read a bias or a slant into things, but Maass has truly captured the whole debacle in one book. The blame side of it Maass points the fingers at those inside the country who helped destablize it, the various diaspora who essentially bankrolled it, the politicians who encouraged it, the non-Yugoslav politicians who just ignored it and hoped it went away.

An awesome read, not a boring blow by blow historical analysis but a look at the people caught in the worst atrocities in Europe in 50 years

Maass provides a vivid and brutal picture of the realities of everyday life during the Bosnian conflict. On the experience of being a war correspondent, and in portraying the suffering of the victims, he is outstanding. However, the book fails to present any serious account of the causes of the war, and seems to lack an understanding of the religious and historical realities of the region surprising in someone so fond of Rebecca West's masterpiece, "Black Lamb & Grey Falcon." Maass is fond of making the point that England and France have a traditional historical emnity, and comparing this to the hatred between the Bosnians and Serbs. This seems to miss a few basic realities, such as the fact that the Anglo/French dislike has never involved (at least for the last five hundred years or so) systematic brutalisation and ethnic hatred on a Balkan scale. Maass also seems a little too blindly anti-Serbian, and to believe, oddly, that US military intervention would have been a panacea for the region. Also, while it raises important questions about the realities of evil and the breakdown of society, it fails to present any real answers to these questions, instead escaping into banalities. Ultimately, a well-written, important book that fails because it is a deeply American account of what is a European tragedy.

The friend who sent me this book said that after I've done the reading, I would be sad and angry, as he did. He's right, the story is very heavy. Not to mention the horrors happened back in Bosina, it's the "human nature" that Peter Maass has been exploring from the war story that appear to be scaring to me. The dark sides of humans, which make a man gets up in the morning to start killing his neighbor, which make a man to be hypocritical and indifferent to the massacre and torture... I hope you, Peter Maass can get some comforts by knowing that many who read the book were deeply moved with your strength, courage, and honesty. For myself, I think I was changed from this experience. You may not know what a great job you've done, but you deserve tons of compliments. I like to say thank-you, and I like to share this book with as many people as I can. - Candi -

This book showed how terrible the War in Bosnia really was. The media failed to show us the bloodbath that it became. I am sorry that we as a nation did not do more to help the Muslims in Bosnia. Whether we are Christian, Jew, Muslim, or Atheist we have a moral responsibility to help defend a small country from genocide. The shocking truth in this book opened my eyes but it also deeply depressed me. One is tempted to give up hope in the face of such monstrous reality. We live in a very unpredictable, hostile, and politically unstable world and Peter Maass shows just how evil it can get.

This book is a wonderful balance of the humanity and politics of the Bosnian situation. Peter Maass is an excellent author whose descriptions will leave you with chills... I highly reccommend this book not only for its intellectual worth but also for its quality diction.

This is a superb book. Maass provides an extemely readable and informative history of the conflict in Bosnia. But what makes this book so fascinating is that Maass also sheds light on the nature of humanity in general, and the hypocrisy of the United nations and the United States in particular. His thesis is that any society can be torn apartgiven the right circumstances and the wrong leaders.

Read this book.

Peter Maass presents a chilling story about the horrors of the War in Yugoslavia and his terrifying moments as a journalist covering another episode of man's inhumanity to man, ethnic cleansing, murder, war. This book haunted my sleep and changed my life. After reading Maass' book, I was driven to visit Sarajevo, Karlowac, Srjebenica. My life will never be the same. As Americans, we repeatedly, through history, have looked the other way while genocide destroys cultures. Peter Maass brings the nightmare of ethnic cleansing to the reader in ways that creep through the comforts of your life. READ IT, you will never stand by quietly again!

In the aftermath of the war in the Balkans, it became quite a "fashion" to be reading about the Bosnian war and it seemed like alot of people started writing about the history, politics and cultural background of an area that was largely neglected before. Peter Maass' book could easily have been another telling from a Western journalist's/ politician's mistaken perpective, where they accuse the Yugoslav -- Muslims, Serbs, Croats and everyone of having been fighting and killing each other from day one. Instead, he has a produced one of the best personal accounts of the Bosnian conflict. Rather than confronting the issue in a me vs. them scenario, Maass crosses the line and tries to identify with them, the victims of conflict, and an indifferent international community. Maass sets a background for readers who have zero knowledge on the war or countries involved and his strong, frustrated, bitter and angry voice moves readers to the suffering that went on in the region known as the Powder Keg. A phenomenal book on a complex situation, Maass has done justice to the countless nameless people who were affected by the war by bringing their story to the surface and telling the truth as he saw and experienced it.