Customer Reviews

Yugoslavia's Bloody Collapse: Causes, Course and Consequences

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After reading this book, I bought a copy for my son who is a U.S Army paratrooper expecting to be deployed to Kosovo. The author provides good perspective on the history & demise of Yugoslavia, and on subsequent events up to 1995. While especially critical of the Serbs, he demonstrates flaws and errors on nearly every hand, local or global, that have contributed to the terrible events in the region. Some of the analysis seems eerily prescient given the ability to read it with five years more gone by. The brevity of the book is a mixed blessing -- so many people, places and organizations come into play, with so little detail given on each, that I frequently forgot who was who or got different ones confused with each other. However, like the individual stitches in a tapestry, the details still present an overall pattern that has helped me understand the news and recent history much more clearly -- but you have to want to read it. The one crying need in the book is for maps. Each of the three small line drawing maps covers a long and imprecise time period and lacks detail. No topographical features are shown, some political boundaries are indicated vaguely aand others not at all. Many cities and locales that figure prominently in the text are not on any of the maps. I came away with a clearer picture of the politics and ethnicity but completely unable to relate any of my new knowledge to the geography of the region. If you buy the book, get several maps of the region to use with it.

This is the best on the mark and accurate account of the Yugoslav breakup, and I say this as one who has carried out extensive in depth research based on primary sources and every shade of opinion in the press of former Yugoslavia.

Bennett is one of the few who really knows what he is talking about and avoids the pitfall of the uninformed of assigning equal responsibility to all parties in the conflict when prime responsibility must be assigned to the Serbian regime of Slobodan Milosevic and his allies. Bennettt has told it like it is. This is an excellent objective and well balanced account that pulls no punches.

Christopher Bennett gives a very accurate history of Yugoslavia from before WWI up to 1994. Very detailed beginning with 1980 forward. Very informative. Worked well for a research paper I prepared using it.