Rating: 
Summary: A personal side of the war in Bosnia
Review: This is a very brave book that takes an unflinching look at the personal affects of the war in Eastern Bosnia in the 1990's. Sacco is not attempting to tell about the battles, victories defeats of this war but rather the affects the war had on the civilians trying to live through it. This novel is important and should not be dismissed or overlooked due to the choice by the author of making this a graphic novel.If you are looking for a detailed accounting of the war this is not the book for you. Instead this is the book for any reader that wants to learn the personal affects of war upon the civilians trying to live through it. Sacco uses personal interviews with people who lived in Bosnia to give the reader an intimate feeling of how life is like for the people who had to live through the war, rather than being able to see "highlights" on CNN every few days. The graphic novel form works well for Sacco. Sacco's art work is graphic and raw yet has a beauty to it that the reader should enjoy, even while reeling from some of the war images. The intimacy of the medium, illustrating events versus describing them, hits the reader with a great deal of impact and shows the severity of the environment and events in the novel. This book is a great example of the possibilities of the graphic novel medium. Hopefully there will be more works from Sacco soon.
Rating:
Summary: A personal side of the war in Bosnia
Review: This is a very brave book that takes an unflinching look at the personal affects of the war in Eastern Bosnia in the 1990's. Sacco is not attempting to tell about the battles, victories defeats of this war but rather the affects the war had on the civilians trying to live through it. This novel is important and should not be dismissed or overlooked due to the choice by the author of making this a graphic novel. If you are looking for a detailed accounting of the war this is not the book for you. Instead this is the book for any reader that wants to learn the personal affects of war upon the civilians trying to live through it. Sacco uses personal interviews with people who lived in Bosnia to give the reader an intimate feeling of how life is like for the people who had to live through the war, rather than being able to see "highlights" on CNN every few days. The graphic novel form works well for Sacco. Sacco's art work is graphic and raw yet has a beauty to it that the reader should enjoy, even while reeling from some of the war images. The intimacy of the medium, illustrating events versus describing them, hits the reader with a great deal of impact and shows the severity of the environment and events in the novel. This book is a great example of the possibilities of the graphic novel medium. Hopefully there will be more works from Sacco soon.
Rating:
Summary: This is not a comic book!
Review: This is an astonishing book, for two reasons: first of all, it shows a side of the Balkan conflicts that is simply invisible in any other source. And secondly, the artwork in it is amazing. The art/text combination is unique and uniquely engaging and evocative. But make no mistake: this is not a comic book: it's a serious exploration of important events. Which is not to say that it is free of humor. There are some very funny parts, and the artist/narrator-character is keenly insightful on a human level. But there are some devastating sections, too, which made me have to put the book down for a while, though not for long, since I was always compelled to return to this product of Sacco's genius.
Rating:
Summary: Stunning and memorable
Review: This work of comics journalism is utterly stunning. Sacco uses the town of Gorazde as a microcosm of the war in Bosnia. Though numerous pages have been written on the horrors of this period of Balkan history, Sacco's drawings and text present a unique intensity and reality. He makes clear that the people who suffered through this are no different than you or I. The interspersed sections of background history are accurate and succinct. I cannot recommend this important work highly enough.
Rating:
Summary: The highest form of art
Review: War reporter and master artist, Joe Sacco, paints for us some of the devastated lives in war-torn Bosnia. We are here shown the self-perceived "retaliatory" punishments meted out to the Bosnians by the Serbs. As Sacco bears witness to these events, one is reminded of Tolstoy's notion that "every punishment is based not on logic or on the feeling of justice, but on the desire to wish evil on those who have done evil to you or another person."
Rating:
Summary: The highest form of art
Review: War reporter and master artist, Joe Sacco, paints for us some of the devastated lives in war-torn Bosnia. We are here shown the self-perceived "retaliatory" punishments meted out to the Bosnians by the Serbs. As Sacco bears witness to these events, one is reminded of Tolstoy's notion that "every punishment is based not on logic or on the feeling of justice, but on the desire to wish evil on those who have done evil to you or another person."
Rating:
Summary: Whatever happened to "never again"?
Review: While graphic novels have been around for quite a while, graphic journalism or history has not. Sacco is a pioneer of this extremely humanistic new genre, and here he bears witness to the horrors of the war in Bosnia. Sacco visited the so-called "safe area" four times in late 1995 and early 1996, and his portrait of a devastated city and its survivors is more affecting than any newspaper account could hope to be. His black ink panels capture in vivid detail not only the scars left on the landscape, but on the people themselves. Sacco alternates between detailing his own visits to Gorazde, a straightforward history of the war, and letting his friends and interviewees recount their own terrible experiences. His own visits are fairly basic, everyone is frightened and devastated by the war and he experiences the guilt of one able to come and go as he pleases. The history of the war is very clearly told, with maps and pertinent statements from UN leaders, Clinton, Milosavich, et al. Sacco clearly highlights how ineffective and downright cowardly the UN approach was, singling out British Lt. General Rose and French Lt. General Janvier for lying and dissembling in order to avoid conflict, and the Clinton administration for being inept and vacillating toward the Serbs. The history is a stark reminder that in the absence of a superpower with a vested interest, one cannot expect loose multinational efforts to deter genocide. Throughout the war, due to a total lack of leadership and moral will from above, UN forces were pushed around, held hostage, and at times fled into the night rather than protect the civilians they were supposed to. Which brings one to the most compelling and disturbing parts of the book. Sacco supplies images to the testimonials of survivors and witnesses to execution, rape, nonstop civilian shelling, snipers, and even poison gas. Most of the voices from Gorazde are those of Muslim inhabitants or refugees "cleansed" from other areas, and while the stories are chilling enough, what also disturbs is the confusion and pain these people feel because in many cases, it was their former Serb neighbors who participated in it. Sacco's artistic style may not be to everyone's taste, and certainly this is only a slice of the larger war, but he bears witness and hopefully makes the reader more conscious of the failings of leadership in preventing what was supposed to be "never again." American loves to pat itself on the back for kicking [...butt] in the "good war" against the Nazis, but somehow we've managed to avoid any responsibility for allowing genocide to continue, even when it's been clearly within our ability to do so.
Rating: 
Summary: Safe Area Gorazde
Review: While Sacco does provide a few pieces of historical and political detail to establish the context of his stories, this book is not an overall account of the war in Bosnia. As he did in PALESTINE, he combines the oral histories of his interviewees with his own observations on conditions in the enclave as well as his feelings about being in a danger zone. He keeps his primary focus on roughly half a dozen people, which helps to structure the collection of vignettes into something of a narrative, while also including interviews with a number of other people. Sacco stands back and lets the interviewees tell their stories, keeping his editorializing and personal reflections to interludes. You can feel his outrage over the conditions and the circumstances, but he doesn't allow that outrage to boil over and distract from the story. Despite the comments of Christopher Hitchens in his introduction, I think this approach serves Sacco well. It ensures that the reader will not be able to distract himself from the brutality and suffering by getting caught up in critiquing the author's tone. And there is plenty of brutality and devastation here. Sacco's artwork is detailed and expressive, not gruesome for shock value's sake but unflinching in its depictions of wartime injuries and combat medicine under the worst possible conditions. You can't help but wonder not only how human beings could be so cruel to each other, but how other human beings could stand back and let it happen.
Rating:
Summary: Another brilliant work of comics journalism
Review: While Sacco does provide a few pieces of historical and political detail to establish the context of his stories, this book is not an overall account of the war in Bosnia. As he did in PALESTINE, he combines the oral histories of his interviewees with his own observations on conditions in the enclave as well as his feelings about being in a danger zone. He keeps his primary focus on roughly half a dozen people, which helps to structure the collection of vignettes into something of a narrative, while also including interviews with a number of other people. Sacco stands back and lets the interviewees tell their stories, keeping his editorializing and personal reflections to interludes. You can feel his outrage over the conditions and the circumstances, but he doesn't allow that outrage to boil over and distract from the story. Despite the comments of Christopher Hitchens in his introduction, I think this approach serves Sacco well. It ensures that the reader will not be able to distract himself from the brutality and suffering by getting caught up in critiquing the author's tone. And there is plenty of brutality and devastation here. Sacco's artwork is detailed and expressive, not gruesome for shock value's sake but unflinching in its depictions of wartime injuries and combat medicine under the worst possible conditions. You can't help but wonder not only how human beings could be so cruel to each other, but how other human beings could stand back and let it happen.
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