Reviews for Kosovo: War and Revenge

The average rating for Kosovo: War and Revenge based on 2 reviews is 2.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2014-08-04 00:00:00 Rhoderick Patricio So my partner and I were heading to Croatia to visit an old friend and I decided to try to get a better handle on my Balkan history. I read a few works about the Balkans and Tim's piece was first. "Kosovo: War and Revenge" is a long, sometimes tedious, sometimes hard to understand account of the autonomous (now independent) area called Kosovo and the war that occurred in the mid to late 1990s. It feels epic when he starts--talking about the ancient history of Kosovo, its relation to Serbia and further Albania. Judah doesn't waste any time though embroiling the reader with the seemingly month to month accounts of the major factions vying for control over the region. I never got a sense of Judah's politics until maybe the end of the book where he deferred what to do to the "international community" and The Hague and spoke of the Balkans as transitioning into a Western-style, capitalist, neoliberal center with lots of little countries. Up the end of the book he held his own views pretty close to his vest. Of course I got leery (and tired) of his writing somewhere midway through when I realized all he was doing was recounting the statements and actions of each substantial faction attempting to take control. In addition to this, he was replaying the actions of NATO and it's build-up to the bombings of civilians (a war crime) of the territories involved. It seemed to me that he was simply attaching himself to the powerful and recounting their story with little interest in the plight of the people who were the beneficiaries of all the fucked up policies, racism, and illegal use of NATO air strikes on civilians. It felt like a second thought. I was pretty disappointed by the end. It reminded of some of the reading I did on the Somali pirate situation in the Gulf of Aden. Lots of interesting stories and analysis of the situation and then the authors would run home to the "international community" to whom they posited would solve the crisis. Garbage. Unless I read otherwise, I won't be reading another one of Judah's books.

Review # 2 was written on 2012-12-30 00:00:00 Kenneth Storer Striking account of events, sincere, vivid and nicely detailed.