Rating: 
Summary: Actually, the only book on the subject that should be read.
Review: Being closely affected by the entire catastrophy of the last 12 years in Yugoslavia I have read almost everything avaliable on Amazon and in the bookstores pertaining to the subject. This is the Mother Goose of all the books on the last 12 years in the region. One realizes this because all other books quote this one quite often. They are usually recycled or paraphrazed parts of Laura Silber's book. The book is cold and unemotional the way a book about such an event should be. It didnt leave anything out and the sequence of events is perfect. Everything that came after this books publishing was either forshadowed or is just an effect of things in this book. On the other hand if one wants to read books by clowns who were responsible for everything allow me to recommend Slobodan Milosevics' "Years of decisions", Holbrookes "To end a War" (sic. but only when my Q rating is really high), Zimmermanns "Origins of a catastophe"(sic. was blind but now can see). Read this book, understand what and how went on and hold your own against any expert on the subject.
Rating:
Summary: Extremely detailed/comprehensive review of Yugoslav breakup
Review: I became involved in the Bosnian crisis in a professional capacity as an intelligence analyst and briefing officer at the headquarters, U.S. European command, and served in Sarajevo with the initial NATO Peace Implementation Force (IFOR). I have been studying and following the history of this area and events in Bosnia ever since. I am familiar with many of the events in the crisis and personalities involved, and found this to be an outstanding summary of the process of the disintegration of Yugoslavia. The portion of the book covering the rise of Milosevic and the departure from Yugoslavia of Slovenia is particularly well done. The coverage of the Bosnian war is a bit cursory, and takes the perspective of the conventional wisdom of the international journalistic community. I know from talking to UNPROFOR officers and others who were there that the Muslims were not totally innocent victims and the Serbs universally evil monsters. With that small caveat, I would strongly recommend this book to anyone trying to understand the entire Yugoslav crisis. It is meticulously researched and documented. Anyone trying to understand what is happening in Kosovo right now would be well advised to read this book.
Rating: 
Summary: A selection of facts
Review: I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Silber and Little bring up the subtle nuances of the war in the former Yugoslavia that have been glossed over in other accounts. It is very detailed without drowning the reader in information. They did a spectacular job of putting the information together in a way that is informative and engaging.
My one dissappointment with this text is that it is less and less detailed and sort of tapers of as it comes to an end. The events discussed at the end of the book get less attention while the importance is not diminished.
Rating: 
Summary: Good, if a little one-sided
Review: Like most of the reviewers I am a veteran Balkanist, and am impressed by the quality of both research and writing in this , I found it even easier to use than Mischa Glenny's excellent study of War & Nationalism. My caveat is the obvious one, it takes very much the 'Guardian report from embattled Sarejevo' approach to the Bosnian conflict. The Serbs are caricatured as villains and the Muslims as heroes/victims, and the Croats relegated to an overly minor role, rather than key players. It also takes this line (a bit)with the break-up of Yugoslavia, where extremist Serb statements are extensively quoted as if representative of Yugoslavia's Serb polity, while similar stuff from Croats or Albanians is carefully put in its correct context as not speaking for the majority. The lies and misdeeds of Serb politicans are likewise accurately deconstructed, while those of the other sides tend to be taken uncritically at their own word. My own experience of living in Bosnia during 1990 was of a community for whom no sides extremists actually spoke, but were polarised against their will by war and the fear of war. The trouble is that a a historian it is easy to be caught by self-fulfilling prophecies, extremists can both talk and ignite a war which engulfs whole communities, it should not be taken as proof they were somehow articulating a whole community's desire for war all along! Overall a useful contibution, especially in terms of chronology of who said what, and provided its bias is taken into account, well worth reading.
Rating:
Summary: Good, if a little one-sided
Review: Like most of the reviewers I am a veteran Balkanist, and am impressed by the quality of both research and writing in this , I found it even easier to use than Mischa Glenny's excellent study of War & Nationalism. My caveat is the obvious one, it takes very much the 'Guardian report from embattled Sarejevo' approach to the Bosnian conflict. The Serbs are caricatured as villains and the Muslims as heroes/victims, and the Croats relegated to an overly minor role, rather than key players. It also takes this line (a bit)with the break-up of Yugoslavia, where extremist Serb statements are extensively quoted as if representative of Yugoslavia's Serb polity, while similar stuff from Croats or Albanians is carefully put in its correct context as not speaking for the majority. The lies and misdeeds of Serb politicans are likewise accurately deconstructed, while those of the other sides tend to be taken uncritically at their own word. My own experience of living in Bosnia during 1990 was of a community for whom no sides extremists actually spoke, but were polarised against their will by war and the fear of war. The trouble is that a a historian it is easy to be caught by self-fulfilling prophecies, extremists can both talk and ignite a war which engulfs whole communities, it should not be taken as proof they were somehow articulating a whole community's desire for war all along! Overall a useful contibution, especially in terms of chronology of who said what, and provided its bias is taken into account, well worth reading.
Rating:
Summary: A brilliant analysis of the breakup of Yugoslavia
Review: Silber and Little offer in this book irrefutably the most exhaustive and lucid account of the breakup of Yugoslavia and the war in Bosnia. Unilke other books on the same subject, this book sheds light on key events in a chronological order, facilitating comprehension and the retrieval of target facts. Readers with no or fairly little knowledge of the subject will probably find the structure of this book very appealing.
Silber and Little argue that the key to understanding why Yugoslavia collapsed is Milosevic coming to power and the subsequent rise of the Serbian nationalism. Cunning and manipulative, Milosevic stabbed the then President of Serbia Stambolic in the back and took over as President of Serbia. Through sophisticated propaganda, Milosevic was able to manipulate and control the Serbian people. He had managed to convince his people that they were second-class citizens facing extermination unless they all united and pursued the sacred Serbian goal of creating a "Greater Serbia". Milosevic claimed that the Serbs in Kosovo were living under the Albanian rule. Of course nothing could be farther from the truth, if anything the situation was quite the opposite. The Albanians in Kosovo were oppressed but Milosevic aware that the Serbs had always considered Kosovo a part of Serbia knew the enormous importance of Kosovo for his people. Determined to "save" the Serbian people from "extermination", Milosevic asserted that the creation of a "Greater Serbia" would be his primary objective. This pursue of the greater Serbian ideology led to the disintegration of Yugoslavia; Serbia first attacked Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and ultimately Kosovo.
Silber and Little completely shatter the myth that the war in Bosnia was a civil war. Instead they provide compelling and incontrovertible evidence that the war was a Serbian aggression. The presence of the JNA, the former federal Yugoslav army in Bosnia, which sided with Bosnian Serbs throughout the Bosnian war corroborates their assertion that the war in Bosnia was the Serbian aggression. Furthermore, Silber and Little give a thorough account of the atrocities that were committed in Bosnia. For instance, a detailed scrutiny of the unfathomable torture in detention camps at Omarska, Trnopolje, Keraterm and Omaca is offered. Silber and Little also brilliantly analyze the gruesome massacre in Srebrenica, the worst massacre in Europe since World War II.
People seeking to understand the root causes of the breakup of Yugoslavia and the subsequent devestation of the country are strongly advised to read this masterpiece. In my opinion, it is undeniably one of the best written books on the subject. It is also without a doubt the most objective one. The fact that it is extremely well structured and well written make it a must. Buy it!
Rating:
Summary: Reporting at its best
Review: Somehow, great reporters become famous after servicing in some type of 'tiranny', like a South American, a Middle Eastern or even a Balkan country. What this BBC correspondents did in Yugoslavia is a true masterpiece. They were able even to read the mind of politicians and war generals; they didn't miss a single point of the action, and their book reads like replaying events occurred now a decade ago.
Rating:
Summary: A masterful account
Review: This book contained much better information about what was happening in Bosnia and Sarajevo than the media did. I don't think the media understood it anymore than the rest of the world after reading this. I enjoyed the book and recommend it.
Rating:
Summary: This is a rather good book
Review: This book is an exhaustive account of the events that led to the 1992-1995 war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, one of the complex, multiethnic republics that had once comprised Yugoslavia. Laura Silber and Allan Little, drawing largely on interviews with the leading characters on all sides in the conflict, have written a book that will be consulted for generations to come, for diplomacy's sake. It is perhaps one of the longer books written about the Bosnian war (it does treat the wars in Slovenia and Croatia, respectively, as well as prime readers on the recent history of Yugoslavia in the late 1980s that shaped it for war). While it lacks in the intricate history to be found in Noel Malcolm's history of Bosnia, and the compressed highlights and historical transitions that are illustrated most vividly in Tim Judah's journalistic work about the Serbs, Silber and Little's work is most effective, in this reviewer's view, in meticulously chronicling every detail of the war in Bosnia. The front lines, the politicians, the paramilitary groups, the efforts and experiences of the few peacekeepers, the atrocities and experiences of civilians caught between exchanges of gunfire; Silber and Little have not overlooked anything surrounding Bosnia's demise. However, as the bulk of this book is devoted to Bosnia, the brief background and key events leading to Yugoslavia's demise provided in these pages could be inadequate for some first-time readers of this tragedy. The revised Penguin Books edition of this book (under review) appeared in 1996. Throughout the dense text are recurrent references to Kosovo, the province from which Slobodan Milosevic, now an indicted war criminal made it to power in Serbia, and later in the rump Yugoslavia. Silber and Little, at that early stage, predicted that worse was yet to come in Kosovo (see pp. 383-384), writing that the post-Dayton police-dominated province with its Albanian majority (and Serb minority) would be influenced by what happened to the rest of the former Yugoslavia. In Silber and Little's words: "A peace settlement based on the principle that statehood derives from ethnicity sent powerful signals to Serbia's minorities...that could lead to further conflict in the future" (p. 384). Once again, the age-old phenomenon of having writing on the wall; Kosovo was a disaster waiting to happen, with advance warning. Essential reading for anyone wishing to understand the faceted character and nature of a long, gruesome war.
Rating: 
Summary: Designed and Decided by the West
Review: This book of the disintegration of Jugoslavia is very detailed, nicely organized, and easy to read one. It covers the step-by-step death of Jugoslavia, and like many reviewers I found biases dragging all over the book as if the Muslims are saints and the Serbs devils. The blame on Milosevic is constant, but the blame of Tudjman does not exist. How good or bad Milosevic is/was, it was designed and decided by the USA and the Western Europe-same like in Irag, with once Western darling Saddam Hussein and suddenly the evil, the demon. The ethnic differences in Jugoslavia were created and provoked by the USA and the Western Europe ONLY by corrupting the Balkans governments in search for more markets for their collapsing empires and places for their oil tubes for their SUV's and poluted fat ways of living.
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