The author has traveled to Kosova/Kosovo, both before and after the NATO airstrikes there, and is currently active in attempts to release Kosovar Albanian prisoners held by the government in Belgrade. In Adem's Cross, the author attempts to depict rural life in Kosova/Kosovo during Serb rule, from the perspective of a Kosovar Albanian teenager, Adem(Adam). The humanity of individual Serbs and Roma(Gypsies), the ineffectiveness of several policies of the Democratic League of Kosova(LDK), the depictions of the city of Prizren and the nearby border with Albania, the views of Kosovar Albanians toward the then raging war in Bosnia-Hercegovina, and the prediction of future intervention over Kosova/Kosovo by the United States, make this book unique, in that it was published before the open emergence of organized armed resistance in Kosova/Kosovo, let alone the start of involvement by NATO.

Believe me,this book is so beautifully written.As a Kosovar I've found it amazing how Alice could make such a great story which in fact most of it or perhaps all of it is true because these sort of things hapenned very often in Kosova. I would highly recommend this book to all of you - no matter what age you are...Well done Alice and Keep Writing as your books will always have a spare place on my library...The best of luck

Adem's Cross is a wondeful book it's easy to read and very informative. This book makes you want to reach out and help these people. It's captivating and exciting, your always on your toes and it ends very well.A+

This book is an English translation of "Ajmo, ajde, svi u setnju," which was released before six months had passed from the end of the 1996-1997 demonstrations. A group of the most distinguished social scientists in Belgrade, together with their students, researched the student and political protests of the winter as they were happening, providing in short order a work that is both a rigorous analysis and a contemporaneous document of the protests. It is essential material for anybody who wants to understand who were the participants in the longest continuous political protest, and what they believed.

Something more of a diary or a long letter home than I had expected. The author visits people and recounts their conversations, many of which remind us how mis-understood the poor Serbs really are.

I read the book just after it was published and missed an opportunity to speak with the author at an appearance she made in Chicago. My only criticism is that the questions the author poses about the Serbian people and their situation during the war are never answered. I was waiting for some insight about the situation and some perspectives on solutions to the political problems in Belgrade. Nothing was answered or ever raised. We simply get a diary of small vignettes. If she really did meet all those people, I'm surprised that the author didn't have an answer to the question she posed about the Serbian people and their mindset. I sent her a note inviting her to research some of the writings by Bishop Nikolai Velimirovich, a Serbian Bishop, and survivor of the Holocaust. His take on the Serbian people, their faith and their tenacity would have explained everything to her. "The Serbs will choose the difficult road because it is the right one, the Christian one."

I would've titled this "A Peek into Serbia" but Levinsohn's description of life in Belgrade v. the rest of more rural Serbia was a surprise to me, as was much of the material in this book. A flowing descripteur, Levinsohn transports us to the dusty but beautiful capital of the former Yugoslavia, and allows tainted Western minds to experience the life of a passionate country and culture, one quite unlike any Americans have ever experienced on paper. The politics of the novel can get complicated, especially since the book is nearing ten years old, and the speculations as to whether or not Milosevic will go to trial in the Hague are tedious to readers, since he has already been there several months. In any case, this book was terrific, and I would recommend it to anyone looking to better understand the mentality of Serbians. Her view of Serbs as "victims with a certain victim mentality" was quite refreshing when splashed against the Western view of Serbs as the guilty party of the war in Yugoslavia and it's casualties. The most appreciated part of this book was Levinsohn's desire to get to the heart of the split of Yugoslavia, and to try to lift some of the intense blame placed on Serbians. In my eyes, she has shed some light onto the matter, more than I can say CNN ever did.

The author conducted a great deal of meticulous research to shed light on an under-researched area: Serbian anti-Semitism and Nazi collaboration. As such, "Serbia's Secret War" provides a wealth of information both to the general reader and more serious students of the former Yugoslavia. However, just the fact that this book appeared in the 1990s in the wake of the wars in Croatia and Bosnia makes it seem like a contribution to the propaganda war among the Serbs, Croats and Bosnians and their various sympathizers abroad. Often this propaganda has involved diatribes about the various atrocities committed by members of one or more of these nations during World War II, which is then projected onto the current situation. To his credit, Cohen does try to avoid such polemics, but his very treatment of the interwar and W.W.II period in Yugoslavia sometimes falls prey to a certain bias. Thus, there are some sections of the book which seem to take a very heavy-handed view of Serbian complicity for crimes against Jews and others during the Second World War, while downplaying (but by no means denying) those committed by the Croats. Even so, this book is worth reading, and particular attention should be paid to the writer's sources, because the most revealing and essential aspect of Cohen's text is the fact that far from being free of anti-Semitism (which Serbian propagandists often claim), Serbia was just as susceptible to this form of racism as any other Central and Southeast European people.

Serbia was not "occupied" by the Nazis in contrary they fully
cooperated with them throughout the WW2.
They even created their Serbian Gestapo.They even killed and massacred their own people
throughout Serbia and elsewhere.
They even wore Nazis uniforms and pretended that they don't speak serbian...

The 1-st chapter:
"In 1937 a political advisor to the Royal yugoslav GOVN,Vasa Cubrilovic draws a plan (memo) called : "The expulsions
of the Albanians".
He is believed to be the conspirator in the 1914 assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo.
The event that gave wings to the World War 1.
Cubrilovic wrote that memo in the hope of "greater serbia" the serbs were to create". Chapter 1 = more scary than any fictionous horror movie I have ever seen.

Chapter 2
"Tripartite pact gets signed in Vienna by two yu GOVN representatives and soon after AXIS forces invade yugoslavia.
serbian officials such Milan Nedic(serb president which is shown in the photo with "fuhrer" hitler),D.Ljotic,Mihailovic
(the head leader of chetnicks) and a lot more start collaborating with Germans more than ever.
It all seems their day has come - and it has indeed.It is important to add that during this time serb president finally manages to meet with Hitler so he could get some bargains, in the return of serb collaboration with Nazis. Nedic believed that this was the most essential time for the creation of "greater serbia" but hitler didn't feel like it and left that proposal for further consideration until..."

...and so many interesting moments that took place during the
nazi times.

A cook, in order to make the food needs ingredients.
A car, needs petrol in order to get going.
And the writer needs researching before he gets to publish a book. Those who write without researching - even if they manage to publish is the same as if they didn't publish it at all because not so many people would read it.Philip J. Cohen has made a restless research and study on serbia's history and he came up with a Great book, that the world had awaited for ages.If only this book was written a bit earlier,and if only this book was read as soon as it got out by prominent figures in the international governments - I am more than convinced that they would have looked at serbia's genocide with different eyes.
Perhaps a lot of my friends and people I knew (all civilians)
would be alive today - spared of serb terror, specifically in
the 1998-1999 war.

During the wars of 1991-95 in the former Yugoslavia the military aggression of Milosevic's Serbia involved also a campaign of historical revisionism. Serbian nationalists falsified Yugoslav history, claiming that during World War II it was only the Serbs who had resisted the Nazis while the Croats, Muslims and Albanians had all been collaborators. In presenting to the world this dishonest picture of events, the Serbian nationalists sought to demonise their fellow Yugoslavs so as to justify their own war of conquest.

Dr Cohen's excellent book sets the record straight. As a Jew who is disgusted by the way Serbian nationalists exploited the history of the Holocaust for their own genocidal purposes, Cohen sets out to expose their historical revisionism and does so convincingly. He proves on the one hand that Serbian nationalists collaborated extensively with the Nazis; wartime Serbia's quisling leader Milan Nedic was one of Hitler's most loyal allies while the Chetniks of Draza Mihailovic joined with the Axis forces in attacking the Partisans and even handed over Jews to the Nazis. On the other hand, Cohen demonstrates the massive participation of Croats, Slovenes and other Yugoslavs in the Partisan resistance.

It would be wrong to conclude from this book that the Serbs as a people are somehow inherently pro-Nazi or prone to violence and aggression. The Serbs, like the Croats and Muslims, had their share of fascists and war-criminals; but like the Croats and Muslims they also had their share of anti-fascists and resisters. The xenophobic propaganda of Milosevic and his supporters in the West has done much to obscure the history of extensive COOPERATION between Serbs, Croats and Muslims that took place during World War II. In countering this propaganda, Cohen has helped to restore a more balanced picture of events.

It seems as though anyone that raises a voice against Serbian propaganda is immediately branded a racist anti-orthodox zealot. This is certainly what's happened with Mr. Judah and it is just as certainly false. Mr. Judah does a good job of presenting the facts about the Serbian history and mentality. Like many prominent historians and journalists he draws the conclusion that the conflicts in the Former Yugoslavia were caused by two factors: 1. A leadership that preyed on it's own people to advance it's interests. 2. A population that has been spoon-fed so much revisionist history and propaganda that it is incredibly malleable and suffers from a martyrdom complex. To see many of the points in this book illustrated by time and history read Mr. Judah's next book, Kosovo: War and Revenge.

Please ignore the other reviews on this page. They have obviously been written by people with some pent up ethnic hatreds, who can't cope with the reality that some members of their group aren't as innocent as they would like them to be. I have read practically every book on this subject I could get my hands on. Judah's book is by far the most comprehensive, well-researched and fairly balanced book on Balkan history. To top it all of, Judah also has an elegant writing style. I am Serb, but my Turkish friend and I both agree that this is the best book on the history of the Balkans we have ever read, and if a Turk and a Serb can agree on one version of history, it's got to be something special...

Who are the Serbs? Following the highly destructive warfare that obliterated the complex, multiethnic country of Yugoslavia beginning in 1991, they are now a pariah, no matter how much policy makers deny this fact. The human tendency for utter destructiveness - vastly documented in the history of the Second World War - was shown in this decade-long episode of recent history, almost as if history itself was being repeated. Tim Judah, in this superb and phenomenal book, has documented history, current events, biography and brilliant writing to paint a picture of the Serbs, who are human beings like us all.

The book draws upon the existing vast historiography and Judah's own experiences and interviews that he recorded and collected during his time throughout the former Yugoslavia. He reported for several leading Western newspapers, such as the London Times, The Economist, The Sunday Telegraph, The Guardian, and most notably the New York Review of Books, where he covered the war in Kosovo. He continues to appear on panel discussions, interviews and his opinion is consulted whenever something significant takes place in the current rump Yugoslavia of Serbia and Montenegro. Judah speaks Serbo-Croat and Albanian, among other languages, which gives him a tremendous advantage; several books cited in the Bibliography are in the original language. Additionally, he has cited Italian and French works on the history of the Balkan region. The current book was first published in 1997 following the war in Bosnia. It was completely revised in 2000 with an additional chapter to cover the events of the Kosovo war (1998-).

The book is divided into seventeen chapters, the first eight of which are historical; the remaining seven plunge into current events and details of the Balkan wars, most especially the political scene in Belgrade, background to key personalities behind the bloodshed, the conditions on the fronts, and the experiences of ordinary civilians on all sides. To prove the extent to which Serb nationalist leaders were able to draw upon a tumultuous history of the Serbs in order to win favor over the masses, Judah condenses the history of the Serbs, from medieval times to the fall of Josip Broz "Tito," the Yugoslav leader that ruled the country for over three decades following the Second World War. Judah examines the highlights of Serb history (which would later be rekindled by nationalists in the late 20th century), particularly the details surrounding the Battle of Kosovo, in June 1389, when Serb forces under Tsar Lazar were defeated by Muslim Turk forces, thus ensuring nearly four hundred years of domination by the Ottoman Empire (pp. 29-47).

Tim Judah's thesis is that politics and politicians instigated the destruction of Yugoslavia, but that nationalist politicians could not have come to power to instigate their harm had there not been a tumultuous history to which they could have turned and manipulated, thereby grossly misleading the Serbs while embarking on a horrific war path. By discussing the history of the Serbs, particularly those episodes drawn on by these nationalists and propagandists, Judah puts the conflicts into context, showing how easy it was to fall into war with rampant emotions and a nationalist fervor.

Judah is a phenomenal writer; his is the work of the professional journalist, reporting events as they happen. The transition from history to current events however, which takes place between Chapters 8 and 9, is fast and abrupt. The reader for one moment is reading about Titoist Yugoslavia, when in the next moment they find themselves reading of the early years of Slobodan Milosevic and his rise to power in 1987. Although Judah commendably knows his history and the personalities of his subjects, he occasionally writes far too much in a sentence, something of which could be slightly overwhelming for the average reader. All the same, he does a terrific job in synthesizing the massive and complex history of the Serbs into little more than one hundred pages, a history in which volumes upon volumes and thousands of pages could have been written. Most certainly, this book is essential for those that wish to gain a perspective on the situation in the former and current Yugoslavia; it beats sole press reports!

Looking at some reviews posted on online bookshops, one finds that Judah is often accused of being highly critical of the Serbs, that his judgments are extreme, and that he does not examine in sufficient detail the roles of other non-Serb nationalists who played an active and important role in the destruction of Yugoslavia. Judah himself noted in his Introduction that the Serbs were under the (common) false accusation that they are the "chief villains" in the conflicts. There is a difference between cliché and truth, but clichés are always born of some sort of truth. The Serbs are by no means any different from other people, and they are not the sole "villains" in the wars, but their politicians were most certainly the aggressors. If Milosevic had not assumed power, the history of Yugoslavia would have taken a much different turn; sadly, he epitomized the worst extreme and did the most to destroy the country, and it was his people that, in euphoria, rallied behind him. In addition, Judah's book is about the Serbs. Perhaps if it were about all the ethnic groups in the former Yugoslavia, then perhaps these accusations of not pointing fingers at enough criminals would be non-existent. Judah's account is very objective, though his contempt for the highly cynical leaders and attitudes taken in the wars is evident. He has described these to be "stupid."

This book is essential reading, as is Judah's most recent book on the Kosovo conflict, now a companion volume to this current book. Quite simply, these two books are the most important that I have ever read.

many people that are obviously lapping it up as well researched truth. What we have here is rehashed Croatian & Vatican propaganda that can be easily refuted by any serious, unbiased, scholarly college freshman.

Mr. Anzulovic, a Croatian nationalist has written a book only a croat nationalist could write. One which essentially blames all the Balkans troubles on the Serbs. In that classic Balkan style, he simply omits any reference to Croatian crimes and builds a simplistic and at times, erroneous case against Serbs. The fact that the entire Serbian community was eradicated by Croatia in 1995 - a full 50 years after Nazi Croatia tried to do in in WWII, is avoided. Anzulovic chooses to ignore the details and simply parrots Zagrebs party propganda line.

I was well impressed by this book. Unfortunately, I am a bit troubled by the negative reviews that a number of other reviewers have given this book. No doubt, many of them are from people of Serbian or Orthodox decent. Regretablly, even some of the most open-minded Serbs and Greeks that I know tend to downplay the ugliness that is a part of our past, probably because it is a threat to their sense of identity in some way. I guess every culture has that though to some extent, I am ashamed of America's failure to come to terms with the genocide against Native Americans over the last 500 years, and the conditions they live today. Many Americans may just find it too troubling to come to terms with the fact that this nation was partially built on the blood of its indigenious peoples (as well as African slaves). That is a dark side of America's past many would rather forget. The same hold's true for Serb's and their history.

The author did a very impressive job exposing the deep roots of Serbia's national myths, which has fed an exlusivist ethnic based nationalism derived from a medieval rather than modern notion of a nation. I found his evidence very persuasive in most respects.

However, I do agree with many of the critics though that the book was weaker for failing to stress much on the Ustasa regime and the atrocities committed by the present day Tudjman-HDZ regime, which played a signifcant role in the current polarized climate (in other words, Milosevic and Serbs are not to be blamed entirely, although they are of primary responsiblity for the region's suffering). However, that does not mean this book is not without scholarly merit. Afterall, the book was about Serbs and their myths, not Croats, Bosniaks or Albanians.