An important contribution to the literature surrounding the disintegration of Yugoslavia and the ethnic wars that followed.
A welcome biography of the “Butcher of the Balkans,” now awaiting trial before the International War Crimes Tribunal.
Sell, a retired Foreign Service officer who worked in the former Yugoslavia for eight years, turns in a nuanced view of Milosevic, the man, often described as “a brilliant tactician but a disastrous strategist,” who led Serbia into an ultimately self-destructive war in Kosovo after a murderous campaign in Bosnia. Sell describes Milosevic’s rise to power from the role of an obscure, essentially conservative Communist functionary to that of empire-builder of an imagined Greater Serbia. Following the defeat of his chief opponent, Ante Markovic, and the effective withdrawal of Serbia from the de facto economic union established among the new republics of the former Yugoslavia, Milosevic set about dismantling the multiethnic society that, by Sell’s account, most Yugoslavians seemed content to maintain. This program of social disintegration relied on the loyalties and actions of mass murderers—and, perhaps, on the influence of Milosevic’s wife, Mirjana Markovic, whom many Serbians believed “was the true power behind the throne.” Sell observes that Milosevic was also well served by the bumbling of the international community, which did little to stop him despite clear evidence of his intentions. He chastises the Western powers, too, for their failure to address on equal terms the claims of all of the former Yugoslavia’s peoples for self-determination, insisting on maintaining the old internal borders instead of redrawing the map to accommodate the claims of Serbs and Albanians, “whose ethnic borders most deviated from the political ones.” He maintains additionally that NATO’s military intervention was less effective in bringing about the end of Milosevic’s reign than was domestic Serbian political opposition, which orchestrated widespread popular resistance and, in the end, delivered Milosevic for trial in The Hague.
An important contribution to the literature surrounding the disintegration of Yugoslavia and the ethnic wars that followed.Pub Date: April 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-8223-2855-0
Page Count: 392
Publisher: Duke Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2002
BOOK REVIEW
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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