LeBor - Milosevic: a Biography

I urge you to read Adam LeBors excellent new biography of Slobodan Milosevic. I fancied that I already knew a great deal of the story but LeBor has combined journalistic flair with a historians grasp of detail to bring us a haunting portrait of the man the West said it could do business with... For those who witnessed the destruction of the former Yugoslavia this will be a sad book. For those who stood by and did nothing it is a book that should make them wince. I recommend it to both but also to a wider public who should know about the policies pursued in their name Fergal Keane, Mail on Sunday

It charts a cogent path through the interminable complexities of Balkan politics, and the sense of victimhood on which Milosevics rise to power was based Evening Standard

An engaging account of the Milosevic years and the misjudgements that caused ethnic cleansing, official corruption and a collapse into war and penury Financial Times

The most engrossing biography so far of a man as complex and shifting as the regions he tore apart. This vigorous book takes Milosevic himself as its focal point: LeBor is able to point to a remarkable black hole at the centre of modern Balkan history Milosevics complete lack of moral scruple which infected almost all those closest to him The Times

LeBor charts with dexterity and black humour the rise, and eventual fall, of this provincial Communist functionary... LeBor is right to link Milosevics politics with his domestic life, and peek behind the closely-guarded doors leading into Slobo and Miras kitchen. For it is there, it appears, that the destinies of millions were decided Independent

Milosevic at school in Pozarevac during the 1950s. For many young people these were times of great hope and idealism.

Milosevic and Ivan Stambolic (left), his closest friend and former mentor, shake hands in 1986. Just one year later Milosevic would oust him in a ruthless act of betrayal.

Milosevic addresses a crowd of over half a million at Gazimestan in Kosovo on 28 June 1989 to mark the six hundredth anniversary of Serbias defeat by the Turks at the battle of Kosovo Polje. The event crowned Milosevic as the unrivalled leader if the Serbs.

Croatian President Franjo Tudjman together with Milosevic in Belgrade in April 1991. The two mens nations were descending into war, but they readily agreed on the need to divide Bosnia between them.

A Bosnian man mourns the loss of his wife and daughter at the Lion Cemetery, Sarajevo, June 1993.

Two boys rummage through the remains of the Bosnian state library, destroyed by Bosnian Serb artillery, Serb gunners deliberately targeted cultural and religious institutions as they laid siege to the city.

Marko Milosevic sits in his racing car before the start of the Belgrade summer race, August 1994.

The Milosevic family, left to right, Slobodan, Marija, Mira and Marko.

Mira greets Slobodan on his triumphant return from Dayton in winter 1995. The man previously condemned as a warmaker was now acclaimed by the Unites States and the West as a bastion of Balkan stability.

Belgrade, March 1999. A newspaper seller in downtown Belgrade hawks copies of the Yugoslav newspaper Telegraf a few hours before NATO airstrikes are expected to begin. The headline reads Stop the war.

Kosovo Albanians survey the centre of Djakovica, days after Yugoslav army and interior ministry police troops destroyed the city in early summer 1999.

Serb paramilitary leader Arkan, Zeljko Raznatovic, fires a machine pistol in the eastern Serbian village of Zitoradje, birthplace of his bride, Serbian folk singer Ceca Velickovic.

Serbs dance on the wing of a United States Sir Force F-117A stealth fighter jet, March 1999. The plane was downed the previous night in Budjanovci, twenty-five miles west of the capital Belgrade.

The endgame begins. The opposition rally against election fraud outside the Yugoslav parliament in Belgrade on 5 October 2000.

The thin lines of riot police are eventually swept aside as the crowd storms in and takes over the parliament building.

A Biography

Adam LeBor

In Loving Memory
Maurice LeBor
19242001

1. Childhood
Growing Up in Brotherhood and Unity: 194158

2. Meeting Mira
Teenage Sweethearts: 195862

3. Building In
First Steps up the Party Ladder: 196277

4. The Capitalist Years
Slobodan in America: 197882

5. Capturing Belgrade
Using the Network: 19824

6. All the Presidents Men
Wooing Two Constitutencies: 19856

7. Epiphany
Unleashing Nationalism: 1986April 1987

8. Et Tu, Slobodan
Ousting Stambolic: AugustSeptember 1987

9. There Are No Friends Anymore
The Reform Commission and the Yoghurt Revolution: 1988

10. Coronation in Kosovo
1989 and All That

11. War No. 1, Slovenia
Small War in Slovenia, Not Many Dead: 198991

12.