A bold, urgent appeal from the acclaimed columnist and political commentator, addressing one of the most important issues of our time.

In Peter Beinart’s view, one story dominates Jewish communal life: that of persecution and victimhood. It is a story that erases much of the nuance of Jewish religious tradition and warps our understanding of Israel and Palestine. After Gaza, where Jewish texts, history, and language have been deployed to justify mass slaughter and starvation, Beinart argues, Jews must tell a new story. After this war, whose horror will echo for generations, they must do nothing less than offer a new answer to the question: What does it mean to be a Jew?

Beinart imagines an alternate narrative, which would draw on other nations’ efforts at moral reconstruction and a different reading of Jewish tradition. A story in which Israeli Jews have the right to equality, not supremacy, and in which Jewish and Palestinian safety are not mutually exclusive but intertwined. One that recognizes the danger of venerating states at the expense of human life.

Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza is a provocative argument that will expand and inform one of the defining conversations of our time. It is a book that only Peter Beinart could write: a passionate yet measured work that brings together his personal experience, his commanding grasp of history, his keen understanding of political and moral dilemmas, and a clear vision for the future.

A gripping and explosive account of Vladimir Putin's tyranny, charting his rise from spy to tsar, exposing the events that led to his invasion of Ukraine and his assault on Europe.

In Killer in the Kremlin, award-winning journalist John Sweeney takes readers from the heart of Putin's Russia to the killing fields of Chechnya, to the embattled cities of an invaded Ukraine.

In a disturbing exposé of Putin's sinister ambition, Sweeney draws on thirty years of his own reporting - from the Moscow apartment bombings to the atrocities committed by the Russian Army in Chechnya, to the annexation of Crimea and a confrontation with Putin over the shooting down of flight MH17 - to understand the true extent of Putin's long war.

Drawing on eyewitness accounts and compelling testimony from those who have suffered at Putin's hand, we see the heroism of the Russian opposition, the bravery of the Ukrainian resistance, and the brutality with which the Kremlin responds to such acts of defiance, assassinating or locking away its critics, and stopping at nothing to achieve its imperialist aims.

In the midst of one of the darkest acts of aggression in modern history - Russia's invasion of Ukraine - this book shines a light on Putin's rule and poses urgent questions about how the world must respond.

Providing an intellectual biography of the challenging concept of genocide from inception to present day, this topical Handbook takes an interdisciplinary approach to shed new light on the events, processes, and legacies in the field. Reaching beyond the traditional study of canonical genocides and related pathologies of behaviour, this Handbook strives to spell out the multiple dimensions of genocide studies as an academic realm. In doing so, it incorporates a vast range of methods and disciplines, including historiography, archival research, listening to testimony, philosophical inquiry, film studies, and art criticism. Contributors address a broad array of episodes, including genocides of indigenous populations in the Americas and Africa, the Armenian genocide, the Holocaust, twentieth century genocides in Indonesia, Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia, and twenty-first century genocides in Iraq, Myanmar, and China. By developing a cross-disciplinary framework, this Handbook showcases the diversity that comprises the field and creates a rich understanding of the origin, effects, and legacy of genocide. With a wide variety of perspectives, this Handbook will prove an invigorating read for students and scholars of international and human rights, public policy, and political geography and geopolitics, particularly those interested in genocide studies and the UN Genocide Convention.

The permanent five (P5) members of the United Nations Security Council ? China, France, Russia, the UK, and the USA - have a firm duty to prevent genocide in light of the due diligence standard under conventional, customary, and peremptory international law. This perceptive book explores the positive obligations of these states to act both within and without the Security Council context to prevent or suppress imminent or on-going genocide. John Heieck successfully argues why the duty to prevent genocide is not only a customary, but also an absolute norm of international law, and analyses the scope of the due diligence standard regarding the duty to prevent genocide. In doing so, he considers the ramifications of this on the actions of the P5 members of the Security Council, both within and outside of this eminent body. Significantly, Heieck proposes a legal test for identifying jus cogens norms, and explores the effect of these on the actions and omissions of specifically identified members of the United Nations (UN). Topical and insightful, A Duty to Prevent Genocide will be an important read for both academics and students of international law and politics who wish to further understand the legal nature of the duty of the P5 members to prevent genocide. It will also provide valuable insights for policymakers of the P5 member states.

When Lidia Maksymowicz was just a young girl, her partisan family went into hiding in the forest of Belorussia. It was there that they were arrested and taken to Auschwitz. Lidia was branded 70072, sent to the infamous ‘children’s block’ and subjected to the experiments of Dr Josef Mengele.

Having survived Auschwitz, Lidia was adopted and grew up in the industrial town of Oswiecim. She never gave up trying to find her family. In 1962, seventeen years after the liberation, she discovered that her parents were still alive and that her mother had never stopped searching for her. In Moscow, early-1960s, they were finally reunited.

Lidia has since made it her mission to share her story. In 2021, she made headlines around the world when Pope Francis kissed the tattoo that, once a symbol of separation, led her back to her mother.

The Little Girl Who Could Not Cry is a moving memoir of survival but, above all, the prevailing power of love and hope.

Accounts of brutality fill the history of warfare. The behavior of any human being is, of course, a very complex phenomenon, whether in war or in peace. Historians in large part have described in detail the actions of military groups that have committed brutalities, but have not dealt with the factors that contributed to those actions. After examining the collective behavior of six military groups, representing different combat actions in different periods, some unexpected similarities became clear. While these groups were in very different situations and operated during different periods in history, there are similar factors that allowed the members of these groups to kill men, women and children in cold blood, and to commit acts of unspeakable brutality. After a close analysis of these military groups, five principle factors that had the greatest influence, either directly or indirectly, on these soldiers have been identified. Together, the factors supported each other and crystallized into a modus operandi that resulted in atrocities and bestial acts on civilians. This is the first book to identify the factors that lead to some of the most horrific cruelty in history, and to predict the actions of future groups given similar circumstances.

This innovative collection offers one of the first analyses of criminologies of the military from an interdisciplinary perspective. While some criminologists have examined the military in relation to the area of war crimes, this collection considers a range of other important but less explored aspects such as private military actors, insurgents, paramilitary groups and the role of military forces in tackling transnational crime. Drawing upon insights from criminology, this book's editors also consider the ways the military institution harbours criminal activity within its ranks and deals with prisoners of war. The contributions, by leading experts in the field, have a broad reach and take a truly global approach to the subject.

Eminent jurists, professional legal organizations, and human rights monitors in this country and around the world have declared that President George W. Bush may be prosecuted as a war criminal when he leaves office for his overt and systematic violations of such international law as the Geneva and Hague Conventions and such US law as the War Crimes Act, the Anti-Torture Act, and federal assault laws. "George W. Bush, War Criminal?" identifies and documents 269 specific war crimes under US and international law for which President Bush, senior officials and staff in his administration, and military officers under his command are liable to be prosecuted. Haas divides the 269 war crimes of the Bush administration into four classes: 6 war crimes committed in launching a war of aggression; 36 war crimes committed in the conduct of war; 175 war crimes committed in the treatment of prisoners; and 52 war crimes committed in postwar occupations.

For each of the 269 war crimes of the Bush administration, Professor Haas gives chapter and verse in precise but non-technical language, including the specific acts deemed to be war crimes, the names of the officials deemed to be war criminals, and the exact language of the international or domestic laws violated by those officials. The author proceeds to consider the various US, international, and foreign tribunals in which the war crimes of Bush administration defendants may be tried under applicable bodies of law. He evaluates the real-world practicability of bringing cases against Bush and Bush officials in each of the possible venues. Finally, he weighs the legal, political, and humanitarian pros and cons of actually bringing Bush and Bush officials to trial for war crimes.

Reverberations of Nazi Violence in Germany and Beyond explores the complex and diverse reverberations of the Second World War after 1945. It focuses on the legacies that National Socialist violence and genocide perpetrated in Europe continue to have in German-speaking countries and communities, as well as among those directly affected by occupation, terror and mass murder. Furthermore it explores how those legacies are in turn shaped by the present. The volume also considers conflicting, unexpected and often dissonant interpretations and representations of these events, made by those who were the witnesses, victims and perpetrators at the time and also by different communities in the generations that followed. The contributions, from a range of disciplinary perspectives, enrich our understanding of the complexity of the ways in which a disturbing past continues to disrupt the present and how the past is in turn disturbed and instrumentalized by a later present.

An indispensable reference on concentration camps, death camps, prisoner-of-war camps, and military prisons offering broad historical coverage as well as detailed analysis of the nature of captivity in modern conflict. This comprehensive reference work examines internment, forced labor, and extermination during times of war and genocide, with a focus on the 20th and 21st centuries and particular attention paid to World War II and recent conflicts in the Middle East. It explores internment as it has been used as a weapon and led to crimes against humanity and is ideal for students of global studies, history, and political science as well as politically and socially aware general readers. In addition to entries on such notorious camps as Abu Ghraib, Andersonville, Auschwitz, and the Hanoi Hilton, the encyclopedia includes profiles of key perpetrators of camp and prison atrocities and more than a dozen curated and contextualized primary source documents that further illuminate the subject. Primary sources include United Nations documents outlining the treatment of prisoners of war, government reports of infamous camp and prison atrocities, and oral histories from survivors of these notorious facilities. Maintains a modern focus while providing broad historical context Covers lesser-known but significant events such as the camps set up by the British for refugees of the Boer Wars that resulted in the deaths of 25,000 people Provides the context necessary to help students understand the significance of the primary source material in introductions Studies camps outside of World War II, illustrating their use in numerous other wars and genocides

This ground-breaking comparative perspective on the subject of World War II war crimes and war justice focuses on American and German atrocities. Almost every war involves loss of life of both military personnel and civilians, but World War II involved an unprecedented example of state-directed and ideologically motivated genocide-the Holocaust. Beyond this horrific, premeditated war crime perpetrated on a massive scale, there were also isolated and spontaneous war crimes committed by both German and U.S. forces. The book is focused upon on two World War II atrocities-one committed by Germans and the other by Americans. The author carefully examines how the U.S. Army treated each crime, and gives accounts of the atrocities from both German and American perspectives. The two events are contextualized within multiple frameworks: the international law of war, the phenomenon of war criminality in World War II, and the German and American collective memories of World War II. Americans, Germans and War Crimes Justice: Law, Memory, and "The Good War" provides a fresh and comprehensive perspective on the complex and sensitive subject of World War II war crimes and justice. . Provides historic photographs related to war crimes and trials . An extensive bibliography of primary sources and secondary literature in English and German related to World War II war crimes and trials

The Syrian war has been an example of the abuse and insufficient delivery of humanitarian assistance. According to international practice, humanitarian aid should be channelled through a state government that bears a particular responsibility for its population. Yet in Syria, the bulk of relief went through Damascus while the regime caused the vast majority of civilian deaths. Should the UN have severed its cooperation with the government and neglected its humanitarian duty to help all people in need? Decision-makers face these tough policy dilemmas, and often the "neutrality trap" snaps shut. This book discusses the political and moral considerations of how to respond to a brutal and complex crisis while adhering to international law and practice. The author, a scholar and senior diplomat involved in the UN peace talks in Geneva, draws from first-hand diplomatic, practitioner and UN sources. He sheds light on the UN's credibility crisis and the wider implications for the development of international humanitarian and human rights law. This includes covering the key questions asked by Western diplomats, NGOs and international organizations, such as: Why did the UN not confront the Syrian government more boldly? Was it not only legally correct but also morally justifiable to deliver humanitarian aid to regime areas where rockets were launched and warplanes started? Why was it so difficult to render cross-border aid possible where it was badly needed? The meticulous account of current international practice is both insightful and disturbing. It tackles the painful lessons learnt and provides recommendations for future challenges where politics fails and humanitarians fill the moral void.

Since unification, the Federal Republic of Germany has made vaunted efforts to make amends for the crimes of the Third Reich. Yet it remains the case that the demands for restitution by many countries that were occupied during the Second World War are unresolved, and recent demands from Greece and Poland have only reignited old debates. This book reconstructs the German occupation of Poland and Greece and gives a thorough accounting of these debates. Working from the perspective of international law, it deepens the scholarly discourse around the issue, clarifying the 'never-ending story' of German reparations policy and making a principled call for further action. A compilation of primary sources comprising 125 annotated key texts (512 pages) on the complexity of reparations discussions covering the period between 1941 and the end of 2017 is available for free on the Berghahn Books website, doi: 10.3167/9781800732575.dd.

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aAt this critical moment in time, Extraordinary Justice seeks to fill an important gap in our understanding of what military tribunals are, how they function, and how successful they are in administering justice by placing them in comparative and historical context.a
--"International Law Reporter"

aProvides a timely work of history and a provactive thesisa--"New York Law Journal"

In an illuminating . . . survey, Richards traces the use of military commissions . . . throughout the U.S. history as well as in the Boer War and World War I.a
--"New York Law Journal"

"A fascinating history of military commissions in the West's prior wars. Peter Richards argues that military justice has a necessary role to play in defeating al Qaeda. The processes of fair trial, he argues, must take account of the real difficulties posed by this new style of war."
--Ruth Wedgwood, Edward Burling Professor of International Law and Diplomacy, Johns Hopkins University

"An excellent work, breaking new ground while respecting the scholarship and writing that has gone before. It is unique in its content, approach, and lessons, reflecting deep research and excellent scholarship."
--Gary D. Solis, Georgetown Law, and author of "Marines and Military Law in Vietnam"

The Al-Qaeda terror attacks of September 11, 2001 aroused a number of extraordinary counter measures in response, including an executive order authorizing the creation of military tribunals or "commissions" for the trial of accused terrorists. The Supreme Court has weighed in on the topic with some controversial and deeply divided decisions, most recently "Hamdan v. Rumsfeld,"

At this critical moment in time, Extraordinary Justice seeks to fill an important gap in our understanding of what military tribunals are, how they function, and how successful they are in administering justice by placing them in comparative and historical context. Peter Judson Richards examines tribunals in four modern conflicts: the American Civil War, the British experience in the Boer War, the French tribunals of the "Great War," and allied practices during the Second World War.

Richards also examines the larger context of specific political, legal and military concerns, addressing scholarly and policy debates that continually arise in connection with the implementation of these extraordinary measures. He concludes that while the record of the national tribunals has been mixed, enduring elements in the character of warfare, of justice, and the nature of political reality together justify their continued use in certain situations.

A thorough introduction to the laws of war, the savagery of war crimes, and the international system that demands justice. How do you speak of the unspeakable and defend the indefensible? War Crimes and Justice: A Reference Handbook thoroughly examines the laws of war and how the world community handles the monstrous brutalities of war through the international justice system. Highlighted are 20th century war crimes and trials including Yugoslavia, Kosovo, and the Kerry incident in Vietnam. Also covered are the four international tribunals established to punish violators in Nuremberg, Tokyo, Yugoslavia, and Rwanda. Pulitzer Prize-nominated author Howard Ball discusses those who committed unspeakable acts during war, others who sought justice for victims, and case studies portraying both victims and perpetrators. Significant treaties and conventions are explored, as well as all the options available to nations emerging from the throes of bloody civil wars to ensure peace with justice. Includes coverage of key people and trials including World War II, Vietnam, and the recent war in Kosovo Provides speeches, reports, and edited trial transcripts from cases involving war crimes

Overshadowed for many years by the Nuremberg trials, the Tokyo Trial--one of the major events in the aftermath of World War II--has elicited renewed interest since the 50th anniversary of the war's end. Revelations of previously hidden war crimes, including comfort women and biological warfare, and the establishment of international courts to try Yugoslav and Rwandan war criminals have added to the interest. This bibliography addressees the renewed interest in the Tokyo Trial, providing over 700 citations to official publications, scholarly monographs and journal articles, contemporaneous accounts, manuscript collections, and Web sites. Also included are sources on the Trial's influence on international law and military law and unresolved issues being debated to this day.

Defining war crimes after the fact, practicing victor's justice to punish enemies, holding military commanders accountable for their troops' actions--these were issues confronted in the Tokyo Trial and other Asia-Pacific war crimes trials. They are still being investigated, researched, and debated today. This bibliography helps to illuminate these issues from different perspectives, providing a variety of ways to locate relevant English-language sources. The volume also includes citations to contemporary issues stemming from the Asia-Pacific war crimes trials--comfort women, biological warfare, and unresolved issues of reparations and official apologies. The book is a useful guide to sources on all aspects of the Tokyo Trial.

War crimes have devastating effects on victims and perpetrators and endanger broader political and military goals. The protection of civilians, one of the most fundamental norms in the laws of war, appears to have weakened despite almost universal international agreement. Using insights from organizational theory, this book seeks to understand the process between military socialization and unit participation in war crimes. How do militaries train their soldiers in the laws of war? How do they enforce compliance with these laws? Drawing on evidence from the Korean War, the Malayan Emergency, and the Canadian peacekeeping mission in Somalia, the author discovers that military efforts to train soldiers about the laws of war are poor and leadership often sent mixed signals about the importance of compliance. However, units that developed subcultures that embraced these laws and had strong leadership were more likely to comply than those with weak discipline or countercultural norms.

This book examines expectations for justice in transitional societies and how stakeholder expectations are ignored, marginalized and co-opted by institutions in the wake of conflict. Focusing on institutions that have adopted international criminal trials, the authors encourage us to ask not only whether expectations are appropriate to institutions, but whether institutions are appropriate expectations. Drawing upon a wide variety of sources, this volume demonstrates that a profound 'expectation gap' - the gap between anticipated and likely outcomes of justice - exists in transitional justice systems and processes. This 'expectation gap' requires that the justice goals of local communities be managed accordingly. In proposing a perspective of enhanced engagement, the authors argue for greater compromise in the expectations, goals and design of transitional justice. This book will constitute an important and valuable resource for students of scholars of transitional justice as well as practitioners, particularly with regards to the design of transitional justice responses.

This book uses in-depth interview data with victims of conflict in Northern Ireland, South Africa and Sri Lanka to offer a new, sociological conceptualization of everyday life peacebuilding. It argues that sociological ideas about the nature of everyday life complement and supplement the concept of everyday life peacebuilding recently theorized within International Relations Studies (IRS). It claims that IRS misunderstands the nature of everyday life by seeing it only as a particular space where mundane, routine and ordinary peacebuilding activities are accomplished. Sociology sees everyday life also as a mode of reasoning. By exploring victims' ways of thinking and understanding, this book argues that we can better locate their accomplishment of peacebuilding as an ordinary activity. The book is based on six years of empirical research in three different conflict zones and reports on a wealth of interview data to support its theoretical arguments. This data serves to give voice to victims who are otherwise neglected and marginalized in peace processes.

This book presents a comprehensive overview of the Nanjing Massacre, together with an in-depth analysis of various aspects of the event and related issues. Drawing on original source materials collected from various national archives, national libraries, church historical society archives, and university libraries in China, Japan, Germany, United Kingdom and the United States, it represents the first English-language academic attempt to analyze the Nanjing Massacre in such detail and scope. The book examines massacres and other killings, in addition to other war crimes, such as rape, looting, and burning. These atrocities are then explored further via a historical analysis of Chinese survivors' testimony, Japanese soldiers' diaries, Westerners' eyewitness accounts, the news coverage from American and British correspondents, and American, British and German diplomatic dispatches. Further, the book explores issues such as the role and function of the International Committee for Nanking Safety Zone, burial records of massacre victims, post-war military tribunals, controversies over the Nanjing Massacre, and the 100-Man Killing Contest. This book is intended for all researchers, scholars, graduate and undergraduate students, and members of the general public who are interested in Second World War issues, Sino-Japanese conflicts, Sino-Japan relations, war crimes, atrocity and holocaust studies, military tribunals for war crimes, Japanese atrocities in China, and the Nanjing Massacre.

This book represents the first multi-disciplinary introduction to the study of war crimes trials and investigations. It introduces readers to the numerous disciplines engaged with this complex subject, including: Forensic Anthropology, Economics and Anthropometrics, Legal History, Violence Studies, International Criminal Justice, International Relations, and Moral Philosophy. The contributors are experts in their respective fields and the chapters highlight each discipline's major trends, debates, methods and approaches to mass atrocity, genocide, and crimes against humanity, as well as their interactions with adjacent disciplines. Case studies illustrate how the respective disciplines work in practice, including examples from the Allied Hunger Blockade, WWII, the Guatemalan and Spanish Civil Wars, the Former Yugoslavia, and Uganda. Including bibliographical essays to offer readers crucial orientation when approaching the specialist literature in each case, this edited collection equips readers with what they need to know in order to navigate a complex, and until now, deeply fragmented field. A diverse and interdisciplinary body of research, this book will be indispensable reading for scholars of war crimes.

Konrad Morgen: The Conscience of a Nazi Judge is a moral biography of Georg Konrad Morgen, who prosecuted crimes committed by members of the SS in Nazi concentration camps and eventually came face-to-face with the system of industrialized murder at Auschwitz. His wartime papers and postwar testimonies yield a study in moral complexity.

The dramatic uprisings that ousted the long-standing leaders of several countries in the Arab region set in motion an unprecedented period of social, political and legal transformation. The prosecution of political leaders took centre stage in the pursuit of transitional justice following the 'Arab Spring'. Through a comparative case study of Egypt, Libya, Tunisia and Yemen, this book argues that transitional justice in the Arab region presents the strongest challenge yet to the transitional justice paradigm. This paradigm is built on the underlying assumption that transitions constitute a shift from non-liberal to liberal democratic regimes, where often legal measures are taken to address atrocities committed during the prior regime. The book is guided by two principal questions: first, what trigger and driving factors led to the decision of whether or not to prosecute former political leaders? And second, what shaping factors affected the content and extent of decisions regarding prosecution? In answering these questions, the book enhances our understanding of how transitional justice is pursued by different actors in varied contexts. In doing so, it challenges the predominant understanding that transitional justice uniformly occurs in liberalising contexts and calls for a re-thinking of transitional justice theory and practice. Using original findings generated from almost 50 interviews across 4 countries, this research builds on the growing critical literature that claims that transitional justice is an under-theorised field and needs to be developed to take into account non-liberal and complex transitions. It will be stimulating and thought-provoking reading for all those interested in transitional justice and the 'Arab Spring'.

Winner, "Publishers Weekly" Best Books of 2002, Non-Fiction

"In badly constructed books, the reader doesn't care what happens on the next page. In well-constructed books, the reader can't wait to see what happens on the next page. This book is a rare, third kind: The reader dreads what will happen on the next page. Nevertheless, he feels compelled to read on. . . . McAllester takes the reader not only along the streets where atrocities have been committed but inside homes while they are happening. As is the case with many good reads, the power of such scenes comes from the order in which events are presented. First the author develops a character, then later in the book informs you about his fate. Or the author will describe how a family is brutalized, then describes, almost as an aside -- in the course of a succeeding chapter about his own adventures in war-torn Kosovo -- how he meets a traumatized eyewitness to the previous account. In this way, the reader becomes an observer not only of what was happening inside Kosovo during the NATO bombardment but of what was happening to McAllester himself and how he managed to assemble his book."
--"Washington Post"

"The power of McAllester's extraordinary book lies not in its comprehensiveness or its literary polish-though there are many brilliantly moving and perceptive passages-but in its shocking authenticity and deep moral concern. One gets the sense that he risked his life not simply to pursue a story, timely and important as it was, but because of the enormity of the evil being done and his conviction that, in a world of bland policy abstractions, what happened in those days inside Kosovo had to be told."
--"New Leader"

"McAllester powerfully concludes that a sickening mixture of greed, ethnic hostility, and wartime nihilism has displaced the healing power for love and reconciliation for the forseeable future. One of the most thoughtful accounts of the conflict in Kosovo to date conveyed with taut journalistic clarity that should ensure the book a broad range of readers."
--"Kirkus, Starred Review"

"This account is not of the avirtual wara that Westerners saw on their television screens but of the real effects on people who consider the ravaged area home."
--"Library Journal, Starred Review"

"McAllester's spare, understated prose is potent as is his exploration of the human side of geopolitics and war."
--"Publishers Weekly, Starred Review"

"In a twist that took McAllester as much by surprise as it will the reader, it appears that Isa Bala lived in that ill-defined world too, a world where people make deals and concessions just to survive another day. Perhaps he believed that through such compromises, his family would be safe. if so, he was tragically wrong."
--"Sunday Telegraph (London)"

"Beyond the Mountains of the Damned is a gripping, if depressing, account of what McAllester found among the ruins. . . . There is no bravado. . . . He offers vivid thumbnail sketches of Kosovar warriors in the field."
-- "Newsday"

"McAllester offers us the kind of specific detail that we need to make other people's lives human to us. Even more importantly, he tells us how it is to be the oppressor, or at least one of the minions of the oppressors"
--"American Book Review"

For every survivor of a crime, there is a criminal who forces his way into the victim's thoughts longafter the act has been committed.

Reporters weren't allowed into Kosovo during the war without the permission of the Yugoslavian government but Matthew McAllester went anyway. In Beyond the Mountains of the Damned he tells the story of Pec, Kosovo's most destroyed city and the site of the earliest and worst atrocities of the war, through the lives of two menone Serb and one Kosovar. They had known each other, and been neighbors for years before one visited tragedy on the other. With a journalist's eye for detail McAllester asks the great question of war: What kind of men could devastate an entire city, killing whole families, and feel no sense of guilt? The answer lies in the culture of gangsterism and ethnic hatred that began with the collapse of Yugoslavia.

In March of 1999, the world watched thousands of Albanian refugees pour out of Kosovo, carrying stories of the terror that drove them from their homes. To Isa Bala and his family, Albanian Muslims who stayed in Pec during the NATO bombardment, the war in Kosovo was not about cruise missiles and geopolitics. It was about tiptoeing between survival and death in the town that saw the fiercest destruction, the most thorough eviction of the Albanian population and killings whose brutality demands explanation. To Nebojsa Minic and other Serb militiamen who ruled with murder, the conflict was about the exercise of power. Today they are alive and well in the new Yugoslavia. So unconcerned are they over the prospect of ever being held accountable for their crimes that they were willing to sit down over coffee after the war and discuss in detail their brief, brutal reign.