Love Thy Neighbor: A Story of War

Peter Maass presents a chilling story about the horrors of the War in Yugoslavia and his terrifying moments as a journalist covering another episode of man's inhumanity to man, ethnic cleansing, murder, war. This book haunted my sleep and changed my life. After reading Maass' book, I was driven to visit Sarajevo, Karlowac, Srjebenica. My life will never be the same. As Americans, we repeatedly, through history, have looked the other way while genocide destroys cultures. Peter Maass brings the nightmare of ethnic cleansing to the reader in ways that creep through the comforts of your life. READ IT, you will never stand by quietly again!

I would recommend this book to anyone interested in the modern Balkans, particularly the Serb aggression that began with the rise of Milosevic in the late 80's.Love They Neighbor is a telling of Serbia's horrific war against Bosnia and Bosnia's Muslim population as seen firsthand by Mass while he was there. Maass begins this book with a journalistic attempt to remain impartial and simply tell what he sees, however, it soon becomes clear to him that the Serbs are the aggressors and the horror the Serbs are perpetrating against their Balkan brothers and sisters is something not seen since Hitler, Stalin, and Pol Pot. This book is not an impartial accounting of what was going on; it is an accounting of the atrocities that were perpetrated by the Serbs and tolerated by the West.In my opinion, the best part of the book was Maass's detailing of how first the Bush administration and then the Clinton administration failed to take relatively easy measures to end the aggression. Maass also details how the U.N., instead of helping protect those being slaughtered actually implemented policies that helped the Serbs carry out their terror and ethnic cleansing. Maass tells the truth in this book, but the fact is telling the truth, in this case, can not leave one impartial.Maass also explains thing that our cookie cutter modern new services do not explain; like how the Muslim's the Serbs were persecuting were not any more religiously extremist that your average American. One interesting moment Maass notes is when Clinton is dedicating the Holocaust museum, stating that the museum is a reminder that we can't let this happen again, while his administration, NATO, and the U.N. were actively letting it happen again.I would recommend this book to anyone seeking to learn about recent events in the Balkans. While not an academic work, it is well-written and lends much insight into the failure of the West in quickly ending what would have been easily stoppable had they made the effort. I would also recommend this book to readers of Robert Young Pelton. If you take out the political commentary, one could easily see Pelton writing similar things about many of the situations that Maass experienced.

You heard people say that they didn't even know where Yugoslavia was. That "they" were all the same, all equally guilty, all deserving of the fate they were inflicting on each other. And you wanted to weep and scream and shake them, shake us, out of our complacency and indifference. This book does it. It is about the former Yugoslavia, yes, but it is mostly about how shamefully we left the innocent, the defenceless, the decent, to hang in the wind. It's a book about our shame, and it keens with the same wail of impotent fury and shame I have been racked with all these year, since the fall of Srebrenica.You want to run after people and press this book into their hand, crying: look, this man was there, he saw with his own eyes, you can't dismiss him as a propagandist, as a liar, as an interested party. He didn't turn his head, and you have to listen to what he has to say. But you have a suspicion people will not listen. Not then, not now, nor in the future. We have not learned the lesson, that caring for you brother is the only way to make sure than somebody will take care of you if your time comes. And perhaps we never will.Buy this book. Read it. But more important, make people who would much prefer not to know, not to feel, not to understand, read it.

The friend who sent me this book said that after I've done the reading, I would be sad and angry, as he did. He's right, the story is very heavy. Not to mention the horrors happened back in Bosina, it's the "human nature" that Peter Maass has been exploring from the war story that appear to be scaring to me. The dark sides of humans, which make a man gets up in the morning to start killing his neighbor, which make a man to be hypocritical and indifferent to the massacre and torture... I hope you, Peter Maass can get some comforts by knowing that many who read the book were deeply moved with your strength, courage, and honesty. For myself, I think I was changed from this experience. You may not know what a great job you've done, but you deserve tons of compliments. I like to say thank-you, and I like to share this book with as many people as I can. - Candi -