A well-organized, deeply researched work that ably digests the Balkan war, the criminals, the criminal court, and its legacy.
A bracing history of the hunt for Balkan war criminals and the seminal establishment of the Hague Tribunal in 1993.
Diplomatic editor for the Guardian, English journalist Borger covered the conflicts in Bosnia and Kosovo during the 1990s for both the Guardian and the BBC. In his debut, he offers the thrilling account of the long-running international search for the masterminds of “ethnic cleaning” during these wars. With the disintegration of Yugoslavia in 1991 into rival states, ethnic bloodshed erupted, especially in Serbia, led by ruthless leader Slobodan Miloševic, who eventually became the “first sitting head of state ever to be charged with war crimes in an international court.” Though horrified by the bloodshed in Bosnia, the United States under new President Bill Clinton was loath to send in troops, leaving the United National Security Council to establish the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, an experiment in justice with an eye to the postwar Nuremberg Trials. Yet the court had little authority to track down and prosecute criminals like Miloševic, his puppet Goran Hadžic, Croatian counterpart Franjo Tudjman, Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadžic, and many others. In his vivid, page-turning account, Borger follows not only the actual hunt for the criminals, which took years and as many false starts as successes by a team of international special forces, but also the astonishing legal history that the ICTY forged in bucking a complacent international mindset. The author chronicles the tireless work of keen advocates of the ICTY, such as U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, and the intrepid “tracking team” led by chief prosecutors Louise Arbour and Carla Del Ponte. Borger impressively consolidates this important story, and he also includes a useful chronology of “arrests and transfers to the ICTY in the Hague.”
A well-organized, deeply researched work that ably digests the Balkan war, the criminals, the criminal court, and its legacy.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-59051-605-8
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Other Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 7, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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