Slobodan Milosevic and the Destruction of Yugoslavia [Hardcover]

Louis Sell (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 22, 2002

In Slobodan Milosevic and the Destruction of Yugoslavia former U.S. foreign service officer Louis Sell fills a gap in the literature on the Yugoslav conflicts by covering both the domestic Yugoslav side of the collapse and the history and consequences of international interventions in the wars in Slovenia and Croatia in 1991, Bosnia in 1992–1995, and Kosovo from 1998–1999. Sell focuses on the life and career of Milosevic, from the perspective of both a diplomatic insider intimately familiar with the region and a scholar who has researched all the available English and Serbo-Croatian sources.
Sell spent much of his diplomatic career in Eastern Europe and Russia, including eight years in Yugoslavia between 1974 and 2000, and witnessed the events that contributed to the dissolution and ultimate destruction of Yugoslavia. In Slobodan Milosevic and the Destruction of Yugoslavia he provides first-hand observations of Milosevic from the heady days of his rise to power and, later, in the endgame of the Bosnian war, including the Dayton Peace Conference. Drawing on a wide range of published material as well as interviews with Yugoslav and foreign participants, Sell covers such areas as Milosevic’s relationship to the military, his responsibility for war crimes, his methods of persuasion and negotiation, and his notoriously explosive personality.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

The war crimes trial of former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic, which began in February, makes this political biography especially timely. Sell is a retired Foreign Service officer who spent two tours of duty (a total of eight years) in Yugoslavia, first in the final years of the Tito presidency and again in the late 1980s, just before the country began to fragment. Here he concentrates on the 14-year period (1987-2001) when Milosevic held high office in Yugoslavia, ending with his arrest and transfer to The Hague. Milosevic is depicted as rising to power without bothering about those he harmed on the way up and, once in power, as gradually losing his grip on reality and spiraling down into a world of delusion. Without dwelling on the horror of the war crimes, the author holds his subject responsible for much of the destruction of his country. Although some of these details have already been covered in Lenard J. Cohen's Serpent in the Bosom and Slavoljub Djuklic and Alex Dubinsky's Milosevic and Markovic, this book is valuable for its background on the current trial and coverage of recent history of a troubled region. Recommended for most libraries. Marcia L. Sprules, Council on Foreign Relations Lib., New York
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Review

“It will be decades until someone can begin to write a history of the Balkans conflicts of the last decade of the twentieth century. Until then, few accounts will be more valuable than Louis Sell’s first-hand account of the twelve years of Slobodan Milosevic from his conversion to nationalism in Kosovo to his transfer to the International Tribunal in The Hague. As very few others, Sell has been on the different scenes of the conflicts, met the different actors, seen the drama from different perspectives, and been able to put the pieces together. He has written a highly readable and most interesting book.”—Carl Bildt, former Prime Minister of Sweden and High Representative for Bosnian Peace Implementation

“Louis Sell brings to his fascinating study of the Serbian tyrant a deep experience in the Balkans, an authority based on his own participation in some of the events he describes, and a keen analytical eye. This is a first-rate book.”—Warren Zimmermann, United States Ambassador to Yugoslavia, 1989–1992

“Louis Sell systematically maps the rise and fall of Slobodan Milosevic in the first comprehensive biography of the man seen as most responsible for the violent disintegration of former Yugoslavia. Armed with years of experience as a diplomat and analyst of the Balkans, Sell has written a scholarly and compelling account about Slobodan Milosevic. It is an important work that merits attention from anyone who wants to understand the nature of Slobodan Milosevic’s disastrous rule.”—Laura Silber, author of The Death of Yugoslavia

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 432 pages
• Publisher: Duke University Press Books; First edition. edition (February 22, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0822328550
• ISBN-13: 978-0822328551
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.5 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,605,460 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars My comment from old Europe, February 7, 2003

By 

T NAVARRO SERRANO (Palma de Mallorca, Baleares Spain) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Slobodan Milosevic and the Destruction of Yugoslavia (Hardcover)

Although the facts and the personality of Milosevic are properly described, the book is, in my opinion, too partial. I don't think it is lack of knowledge but the will to believe it that way.
This eternal dichotomy of "good boys and bad boys" that in America is so much extended, appears very strongly in this book, specially when the role of the USA is concerned.Too simple,I must say.
Let's say that it is a good book to be red in America...

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great book, August 17, 2010

By 

S. Campbell (Austin, TX) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Slobodan Milosevic and the Destruction of Yugoslavia (Paperback)

I was lucky enough to take a class with Professor Sell. Naturally, we used many other sources and were encouraged to seek out even more. As part of the history of the area and era I found this book very useful and especially interesting given Professor Sell's first-hand accounts. I would certainly recommend this book to anyone studying the Balkans. I hope he writes another book about his work in Kosovo or, if we're lucky, an account of all his years in the region.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Well written, poorly sourced, and self-serving, September 21, 2007

By 

Richard Murray (Washington State) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Slobodan Milosevic and the Destruction of Yugoslavia (Paperback)

This book is worth checking out from the library, but I wouldn't buy it.

The book is well written and easy to read. I have to give Mr. Sell credit. He is a very talented writer, which is why I gave the book two stars rather than one.

Unfortunately, the book is poorly documented (there are a conspicuous lack of end notes for this sort of a book) and the author frequently writes as though he had privlaged access to Slobodan Milosevic's thoughts and feelings. Mr. Sell may have been an "insider" with the State Dept., but I don't think he was clairvoyant.

It is important to keep the author's position in mind when reading this book. He was a U.S. foreign Service officer serving in Yugoslavia. He was there to advance U.S. Government policy in the region. The real point of the book seems to be to justify the policies of the United States with regard to Yugoslavia.

This book may be valuable as an insight into the thinking that prevailed within the State Department, but it is not an impartial or even accurate assessment of the events that led to the destruction of Yugoslavia.