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There are writers who specialize in the strange and others whose genius is to find the strangeness in the familiar, the unexpected meanings in stories we thought we knew. Of that second category, Lawrence Weschler is the master. Witness the pieces in this splendidly disorienting collection, spanning twenty years of his career and the full range of his concerns–which is to say, practically everything.

Only Lawrence Weschler could reveal the connections between the twentieth century’s Yugoslav wars and the equally violent Holland in which Vermeer created his luminously serene paintings. In his profile of Roman Polanski, Weschler traces the filmmaker’s symbolic negotiations with his nightmarish childhood during the Holocaust. Here, too, are meditations on artists Ed Kienholz and David Hockney, on the author’s grandfather and daughter, and on the light and earthquakes of his native Los Angeles. Haunting, elegant, and intoxicating, Vermeer in Bosnia awakens awe and wonder at the world around us. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Gem of a book
One of several books I buy for all my friends, and which they invariably love.It's an excellent collection of Weschler's work.

Very interesting in patches
The essays in this collection were mostly magazine pieces published in the New Yorker or the Atlantic Monthly in the 1980s and 1990s. As such, the question must be asked: do they stand the test of time? Are they worth re-reading all these years later?
Sometimes they are. The first essay on the author's musings about Vermeer and his world juxtaposed against his coverage of the War Crimes Tribunal judging the atrocities in Bosnia is genuinely insightful. Weschler notes that Vermeer's world was as violent, or even more so, as the former Yugoslavia during its bloodletting. His art is an attempt to impose order on this brutal world and to uphold the dignity and importance of the individual.
Another essay about a scene in Shakespeare's Henry V which is usually cut from performance, in which the king orders the mass slaughter of French prisoners after the Battle of Agincourt is likewise compared to the massacre at Srenbrenica. It's a valuable insight.
However other essays seemed to me to have lost their relevance and sharpness. That should be no surprise after 15 or 20 years. Magazine writing is not intended for the ages. It often belongs to the time in which it was written. Thus an essay about Jerzy Urban, who was the spokesman for Solidarity in Poland during the 1981 crackdown and later reinvented himself as a much-raking editor, seemed far removed from the Poland of today. Additionally, though he provides (very) brief updates for some of his stories, Weschler doesn't do so in this case.
A piece about Roman Polanski seemed long and rather similar to other articles I'd read about the dramatic life and work of this director.
It takes a considerable ego to believe one's journalism is worth preserving for posterity between the covers of a hard-backed book. (I'd certainly never make that claim for myself).
These articles are very well-written and can be very interesting in places. But if it came to a choice between reading this week's New Yorker and this book, I'd take the current issue.

A Fantastic Collection From One of Our Great Writers
Though ultimately difficult to categorize, the simplest way to describe what Lawrence Weschler does for money would be to say he is an art critic.However readers familiar with Weschler's work will understand why this label seems so insufficient.As a contributer to some of the more important journals of cultural and artistic thought, Weschler not only expounds educatedly on the art and lives of some of the greatest creative minds of history, but he also manages to find ways to uncover the deeper connections that underlie and tie together the experiences and creative output of seemingly disparate times, ideas and cultures.For example, rather than including a separate critical/biographical pieces about such essential talents as Roman Polanski, Jerzy Urban and Art Spieglman, he presents the reader with a triad of Polish surival stories.Moreover, these are not lightweight, breezy reads that can be absorbed in a single trip to the bathroom.Rather, you find deeply insightful, rigorously researched theses exploring how the unique life experiences of his subjects mirror patterns evident in their own respective bodies of work.Ultimately, reading Weschler makes one more attuned to the complex series of interconnections in the world around us--he activates the critical eye in each of us.Readers should also not pass up on the recently collected anthology of his writing on 'convergences', "Everything That Rises". ... Read more

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Armed Forces of Bosnia and Herzegovina is the officialmilitary force of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Bosnian Armedforces were unified in 2005 and are composed of twofounding armies: Bosniak-Croat, Army of the Federation ofBosnia and Herzegovina and the Bosnian Serb, Army ofRepublika Srpska. The Ministry of Defense of Bosnia andHerzegovina, founded in 2004, is in charge of the ArmedForces of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The supreme commander ofthe Bosnian Armed Forces is the current president of Bosniaand Herzegovina thus the Presidency commands the BosnianArmy, then the Bosnian Ministry of Defence with theminister Selmo Cikoti?, then the Chiefs of Joint Staff withSifet Pod?i? as the head of the chiefs. Conscription wascompletely abolished in Bosnia and Herzegovina effective onand from January 1, 2006. ... Read more

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This book explores the image Hungarians had of Bosnia and Herzegovina during its occupation (1878) and later annexation (1908) by the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. The research is based on diverse source materials, which include government publications, travelogues, polemical tracts, and geographic/ethnographic works. The focus of the study is on how Hungarians conceptualized their ?mission to civilize?. The major claim of the research is that there is a considerable correspondence between Western colonial discourse and the discourse produced by Hungarians. The creation of a political empire also necessitated the construction of a ?mental? empire. Bosnia was ?otherized? and ?orientalized? by Hungarian commentators and was made to appear as a negative counter-ego of the civilized Hungarian nation. Bosnia provided an ideal outlet for the demonstration of Hungarian political, economic and cultural superiority as well as a chance to demonstrate Hungary?s strong alliance with Western civilization. This book should be of interest to anyone involved in post-colonial studies, nationalism, cross-cultural studies and the history of the Balkans. ... Read more

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High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Croatsform one of the three constitutive nations inBosnia and Herzegovina. They are frequently referred to asBosnian Croats in English, regardless of whether they are from Bosniaor Herzegovina. There is no precise data regarding Bosnia andHerzegovina's population since the last war. Ethnic cleansingwithin Bosnia and Herzegovina in the 1990s saw the vast majority ofCroats move and take up residence in the Federation of Bosnia andHerzegovina, as well as Croatia. It is estimated that there areapproximately 600,000 Croats in Bosnia and Herzegovina. According to 2000 datafrom the CIA World Factbook, Bosnia and Herzegovina is ethnically14.3% Croat. ... Read more

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For Bosnia and Herzegovina, the beginning of the 1990?s meant a period of nationalistic projects within the country. Three sides were created, and the relevance of ethno-religious origin was high as never before - strong attachments to the ethnic and religious identities. Croats aligned with the Croat Defence Council (HVO), Serbs with the Yugoslav People?s Army (JNA) and Muslims with the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina (ArBiH). However, there were exceptions / resistance discourses to the general trend of division along ethno-national lines. It is exactly this exception the author finds worth investigating. Tempted by the appealing controversial quality of a research on those exceptions, and in hope to reveal elements of a hypothetical, 'all encompassing' national identity of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the author pursues a micro study of non-Muslim soldiers in the Army of BiH. ... Read more

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High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The existence of the centuries-old Serb or Serbian diaspora in countries such as Austria, Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Romania, Russia, Poland, Slovakia, Turkey and Ukraine, is the result of historical circumstances ? the migrations to the North and the East, due to the Turkish conquests of the Balkans and as a result of politics, especially when the Communist Party came into power, but even more when the communist state of Yugoslavia collapsed into inter-ethnic conflict, resulting in mass expulsions of people from certain regions as refugees of war. ... Read more

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High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Serbs are one of the three constitutive nations of Bosnia-Herzegovina, predominantly concentrated in the Republika Srpska entity, although many also live in the other entity called the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. They are frequently referred to as Bosnian Serbs in English, regardless of whether they are from Bosnia or Herzegovina. The last 1996 UNHCR population census registered 1,484,530 Serbs or 37.9% of the total population of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The modern estimate is that they form more likely about 37.1% (2000). The vast majority live on the territory of the Republic of Srpska, and West Bosnia and Una-Sana cantons of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Bosnian Serbs are the most territorially widespread nation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The majority of Bosnian Serbs are adherents of the Serbian Orthodox Church, while some are atheists. The Bosnian Serbs of Bosnia and Herzegovina speak the Serbian language in its Jekavian and Ijekavian variant, similar to that of Montenegro and Croatia. Their total population world wide is estimated to be between over 2 million. ... Read more

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The journalistic coverage of the 1992-1995 war in Bosnia-Herzegovina employed a discursive strategy that equated the events and the main protagonists of a complex civil war with a re-enactment of the Nazi Holocaust. Aiming to discover just how widespread was the use of the Holocaust analogy in the journalistic coverage of the conflict and what was its nature, this monograph analysed The Guardian and the Daily Mail in two important weeks of this conflict: August 7th-14th 1992 - the week the Serb prisioner camps were exposed - and July 13th-20th 1995 - the week of the infamous Srebrenica massacre. In the end, we argue that while its overwhelming presence made the Holocaust analogy the dominant discursive strategy on the war, its direct adoption by some of the journalists writing the stories made it the unequivocal way to interpret the Bosnian conflict. ... Read more

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In his remarkable new book Joe Sacco returns to Bosnia, the setting for his first masterpiece, Safe Area Gorazde. In 2001 he went back to Sarajevo to meet up with his old 'fixer', an army veteran called Neven who, for the right price, could arrange anything for the visiting journalist. Sacco gradually realized that Neven's own story - a microcosm of the Balkan conflict itself - might be the most compelling of all. Through Neven, Sacco tells the story of the warlords and gangsters who ran the country during the war, but all the time he - and the reader - never know whether Neven is telling the truth. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

very good but only 105 pages
This book should be read after "Safe Area Gorazde" in order to gain a context of the war (unless you're already knowledgeable about it, which I wasn't).

This one has more psychological depth than "Gorazde".Many of the warlords who defended Sarajevo had criminal backgrounds and after the war the government tried to get rid of them, but they defied the orders.A few of them came to tragic ends.

The "fixer" is a mixed Serb-Muslim guy who was raised as a Serb.The Bosnian fighters questioned his loyalty (apparently some Serbs who were non-separatist got killed indiscriminately in the war).But he's also revealed as often lying.

In the war he was a sniper, often he had to make decisions of whether to kill someone or not, it's like playing god.I learned a lot about what war is like from this and other books by Joe Sacco.

Sacco's Sarajevan Search
Just to be clear, this is not a graphic novel, as some people are saying. It is graphic non-fiction, or graphic reportage, occupying a gray area somewhere between newsprint, photojournalism, memoir, cartooning, and essay. Sacco's first such book on Bosnia, Safe Area Gorazde, is a classic -- and those who found it compelling will certainly want to read this account of his 2001 return to Sarajevo. Aided by a Guggenheim fellowship, Sacco returned to do followup research and find old friends to see how they were getting along in peacetime. In his attempt to learn more about the siege of Sarajevo and the and its aftermath, he reconnects with an paramilitary veteran who had been his "fixer" on his previous trip in 1995. In war zones and trouble spots throughout the world, fixers are the oil that lubricates the machinery of international journalism. They are the ones who steer journalists to the right translator, hotel, driver, interviewer, clean hooker, alcohol, location, etc. -- for a few hundred in hard currency per day.

Sacco's fixer was Neven, a Bosnian Serb who loves his city and fought in one of the many ad hoc brigades that were assembled by charismatic men in the early days of the war before a real Bosnian army was established.  An outsize character, Neven becomes a kind of lens through which Sacco tries to understand the war's very confusing impact on Sarajevo. The book hopscotches between various stages of the war and the present in a kaleidoscopic jumble of images, confusing nicknames, and impenetrable mix of fact and myth. Through Neven, Sacco tells the fragmentary tale of some of the more prominent warlords (almost all of whom were shady prewar characters), and of their sometimes heroic, sometimes despicable activities during the siege. To a certain extent, they are the subject of the book, populist characters who took it upon themselves to create personal armies to fight the separatist Serbs when there was no central government or army to do so (most of the Yugoslav army supplies were handed over to Serbia following the dissolution of Yugoslavia). Of course, many of these patriotic men were also probably interested in enriching themselves, and as the war dragged on, attempts were made to incorporate them into the regular army and police and things got rather messy. As Sacco recounts, many of the "facts" surrounding various killings, atrocities, and profiteering by the warlords will forever remain obscured by the fog of war, and the need for politicians to wash their hands of those dirty times.

At the same time, what becomes increasingly interesting is the relationship between Sacco and Neven, and the plausibility of Neven's endless stories about what it was like "back then." Neven is a down and out character who owes money all over town, and Sacco clearly feels guilty about walking around with bundles of Deutchmarks, while his fixer is real-life war veteran. The subtle (and not so subtle) assaults on Sacco's wallet become a running theme, and are an interesting window on the less glamorous side of being a foreign correspondent. At the same time, as Sacco spends more and more time in Sarajevo, he meets more and more people who cast doubts on Neven's veracity. He's certainly known all over town, and certainly did fight in the war, but there's also clearly a gulf between his stories and the truth. And as a Serb, he's also somewhat of a pariah in his own home city, his apartment is seized by connected refugees, and a general antipathy for Serbs hover around him.

Ultimately, readers looking for a clear understanding of who was who, and what was what during the war, are going to be frustrated -- and are perhaps missing the whole point. This book is all about the fog of war, the strange mutations of time and place that raise certain men to power and then cast them aside, as well as the guilt and confusion of being an outsider looking in

One of the best books I read last year
A darkly violent Fellinesque riff on the Bosnian war, this "graphic novel," by Joe Sacco is a fast read, a noirish examination of the relationship between a parachute journalist and the necessary local 'fixer' who serves as a local contact and makes it possible for the journalist to drop into a foriegn country and get a story. In this case, the local turns out to be a questionable ex-fighter whose war stories are both more and less true than appearances indicate. The fixer, a troubled ex-fighter scorned by his former comrades and spurned because of his ethnic background, is a terrific character, evocative of both the unresolved issues behind the Balkan wars as well as the marginalized citizens anywhere made exiles in their own land. ... Read more

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This is a AIR FORCE RESEARCH LAB BOLLING AFB DC report procured by the Pentagon and made available for public release. It has been reproduced in the best form available to the Pentagon. It is not spiral-bound, but rather assembled with Velobinding in a soft, white linen cover. The Storming Media report number is A146433. The abstract provided by the Pentagon follows: This thesis presents new systems analysis methods that are appropriate for complex, nonlinear systems that are driven by uncertain inputs. These methods extend the ability of discrete dynamic programming (DDP) to system models that include six or more state variables and a similar number of stochastic variables. This is accomplished by interpolation and quadrature methods that have high-order accuracy and that provide significant computational savings over traditional DDP interpolation and quadrature methods. These new methods significantly improve our ability to apply DDP to large-scale systems. Using these methods, DDP can solve a variety of systems analysis problems without resorting to the simplifying assumptions required by other stochastic optimization methods. This is demonstrated in the application of DDP to problems with as many as seven state variables. Of particular interest, this thesis applied DDP to the practical problem of conjunctively managing groundwater and surface water. Moreover, the applications also demonstrate that DDP can be a powerfill planning tool, such as when evaluating a range of capacity expansion alternatives. ... Read more

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This book provides a sociological account of the events in Bosnia in the 1990s, including ethnic cleansing, mass rape, and the role of political journalists. Drawing upon a diverse group of social theorists, including Merton, Weber, and Baudrillard, "Sociology After Bosnia" constructs a social understanding of the experiences of people in Bosnia and the response of Western leaders to these experiences. Beyond looking at the social causes of these events, Doubt sheds light on why Bosnia and Kosovo have largely been ignored by sociologists. He shows why the personal and social tragedies of people in Bosnia and Kosovo and the world's tolerance of these tragedies challenge contemporary sociological knowledge. Doubt argues that sociologists must be willing not only to recognize this challenge, but also to respond to it in order to construct meaningfully adequate accounts of war and genocide in a postmodern era. Doing so, he contends, may yield an important and needed reconsideration of the existing body of sociologicial knowledge and a revision of how this knowledge is applied. ... Read more

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1 map, 1 tableHow was the war in Bosnia reported on television in countries as diverse as Algeria, Croatia, Turkey, Slovenia and the USA? What role did TV news play in the formation of public opinion and government policy about Bosnia? What role should it have played?Bosnia by Television is one of the first academic analyses of the inter-relationship of television news and the Bosnian conflict. A series of essays answers the above questions through a variety of cultural and political perspectives, and contributors include media professionals and academics from thirteen countries. ... Read more

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This digital document is an article from Gale Encyclopedia of Multicultural America, brought to you by Gale®, a part of Cengage Learning, a world leader in e-research and educational publishing for libraries, schools and businesses.The length of the article is 5489 words.The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase.You can view it with any web browser.Contains 8,000 to 12,000 word essays on specific culture groups in the United States, emphasizing religions, holidays, customs, and languages in addition to providing information on historical background and settlement patterns. Also covers ethnoreligious groups such as Jews, Chaldeans, and Amish. Each essay lists organizations and research centers; name, address, and contact information for periodicals, radio, and television stations; and a further readings section. ... Read more