Customer Reviews

Slobodan Milosevic and the Destruction of Yugoslavia

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

 

 

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...

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.

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.

How does a political hack working for the Yugoslavian Communist party evolve into a skilled manipulator of people, and Europe's worst Fascist politician since Adolf Hitler? In the case of Slobodan Milosevic there are no easy answers, yet former diplomat Louis Sell offers a riveting account of Milosevic's life that depicts the latter's transformation from Communist bureaucrat to a dangerous political demagogue. Along the way Sell provides an in-depth look at the rise and fall of modern Yugoslavia, beginning with the closing phases of World War Two, as Tito's Communist partisans battled both the Nazis and other forces belonging collectively to the Yugoslavian "underground", most notably the Serbian Chetniks. Sell suggests that Milosevic hasn't become a rabid nationalist, but instead, has used the cause of Serbian nationalism to further his own political agenda, granting him virtual control over the rump state of Yugoslavia until his sudden downfall in free elections held after the NATO bombing of Serbia in response to the Serb-Albanian conflict in Kosovo. Sell introduces us to a fascinating group of characters, beginning with Croatian president Tudjman, and ending with the likes of American diplomats and soldiers such as Richard Holbrooke and General Wesley Clark. Unquestionably this may be the best book published yet on what transpired in Yugoslavia during the 1990's.

Mr.Sell was my professor at the University of Maine at Farminton, and he was incredibly knowledgeable on the conflict in Yugoslavia. I recommend this book to anyone interested in the region and the conflicts that have gone on there. Sells experience is reflected in this writings and is a must for any political science or international relations student.

Louis Sell describes this place like he was born there. I can just imagine how beautiful this country was before the Balkan wars. How can such a peacefull Country turn to The Land of Demons. After Titos death Yugoslavia slowly began to fall apart. It used to be one country before Titos death, but after his death and after Milosevic there was six.