The streets in downtown Montreal were filled with people - hundreds of them, shouting, waving banners and wearing the ubiquitous "target" emblem on their shirts. They had gathered to demonstrate against the NATO intervention in Kosovo, which had been launched by the Western alliance to end the ongoing cleansing of ethnic Albanians in the region. That particular day had a strange feel to it, not unlike the first day the US-led Coalition began bombing downtown Baghdad in 1991. In a way it felt as if war had somehow found its way, through a crack in space, maybe, into the otherwise peaceful metropolis. On that day, on the recommendation of a friend (thanks Robert), I purchased Ignatieff's The Warrior's Honor. However, I did not read it until very recently, as it had gotten lost (or drowned, rather) among the tons of other "must read" books (their reproductive rate is admittedly very high) that inhabit my bookshelves.

Now that I have read it, however, I understand why it so often gets quoted by other authors; despite its relatively short length, it is literally one of the very best books on the issue of ethnic-based conflict. Ignatieff's writing is extremely quotable, and on numerous occasions I found myself highlighting passages which so aptly drove to the heart of what other authors require whole chapters to evoke. Rich in sources - both literary and philosophical - it is, unquestionably, a master's exercise in conciseness and analysis.

The chapters "The Narcissism of Minor Difference" and "The Seductiveness of Moral Disgust" are especially enlightening, and I know I will be revisiting them frequently.

This book, along with Jonathan Glover's Humanity, should be read by anyone who hopes to cast a ray of light, however feeble, into the shadowy realms of man's inhumanity to man.

At the moment there are many books being published examining the successes and failures of the humanitarian interventions that have followed the end of the Cold War - more failures than successes, truth be told. As part of my job, I read as many of them as I can. It is this book, however, that I constantly return to. My copy is dog-eared, and deeply scored with underlinings. In every paragraph, Ignatieff has something worthwhile - and frequently confronting - to say.

He addresses the role of the media and the triangle of relationships between audience/media/political leaders; he looks at the rise in humanitarian organisations and the peculiarities of the ethics under which they work; he brings insights from the field on the way the UN is so often programmed to fail.

The power of Ignatieff's writing stems from his unique capacity to bring together the perspectives of news correspondent, novelist and philosopher. He is direct and extremely readable, while also knifing into the subtle heart of the "New World Order."

In the chapter entitled "The Narcissism of Minor Difference" he comes as close anything I have read to explaining why ordinary people are moved sometimes to conduct atrocities on their neighbours. It is vivid and convincing.

If you feel exasperated by the hideous mysteries of ethnic and sectarian conflict, I urge you to read this book, if for that chapter alone.

I read this book through a class I took and I was impressed by the deep analysis on the issues of ethnic war including a focus of television and media, charitable empathy, the need for conflict, and a warrior's honor. Ignatieff differentiates ethnic wars happening now (civil wars, ethnic wars, brother vs. brother) than that of wars the US has waged in the past (vs. country/nation). These new types of war show a new dynamic of intervention and war atrocities relating to it. The common thread Ignatieff points out is relating to a warrior's honor. Much like chivalry, a soldier in battle should follow certain rules of conduct like not committing atrocities against the indigenous population or letting interventionists take care of the wounded. Ignatieff also focuses on many ethnic conflicts of today in Rwanda, Somalia, and Serbia as examples of the dimension of ethnic war. Ignatieff uses loaded terminology and might be too much to comprehend, but his examples help the reader understand the context he is pushing for. Further examples from Freud's "Narcissism of Minor Diffence" and James Joyce gives this book a well-rounded academic feel. This book gives great insight to human need during ethnic war especially with the current conflict in Kosovo.

I have loved this book from the first time I read it, in 1992. The character of Asya is facinating to me; so well developped, so enhancing. She lingers in your mind long after the book is finished. It is her story, from her childhood to old age, and the twists and turns that he life takes. She is born at he turn of the century, and lives to the 1990s. Two world wars, lives and loves losts, this is a facinating read.

Norfolk is a brilliant photographer who has taken very difficult subject matter and made beautiful images. He photographed in places which have seen terrible events, past and present: Vietnam, Auschwitz, Cambodia, Rawanda, to name only the most recognizable. The photographs are true, just. No heartstring pulling here. Only clear vision and humane expression. The essay by Ignatieff matches the level of the photograhps. I thank and applaud the authors.

"Being human is an accomplishment like playing an instrument. It takes practice. The keys must be mastered. The old score must be committed to memory. It is a skill we can forget. A little noise can make us forget the notes. The best of us is historical; the best of us is fragile. Being human is a second nature which history taught us, and which terror and deprivation can batter us into forgetting."

In this slender volume, Michael Ignatieff argues beautifully and eloquently for a modern humanism based on the awareness of what makes us human: our ability to express our needs and our ability to remember and reflect our history. It is also a short history of ideas in the field of political philosophy, ranging from the Stoics to Rousseau.

The "needs of strangers" refer to "fraternity," the most difficult of the ideals on the banner of the French Revolution of 1789. "Liberty, equality, fraternity" still determine to a large extent our modern political discussion. Michael Ignatieff asks to what extent have we achieved "fraternity" (solidarity, that is), to what extent can we achieve it, at what cost do we achieve it? On his stroll through the history of ideas he discusses the key issues of our social existence against the backdrop of political philosophy: what is our social identity? Is there a natural human identity? What happened to our metaphysical needs in the modern secular society?

Ignatieff is not a mystic or a dreamer, however. His views are firmly grounded in the Western philosophical tradition. For him, "political utopias are a form of nostalgia for an imagined past projected onto the future as a wish." He is for the most part a realist who thinks we need justice (i.e. equality before the law), we need liberty, and "we need as much solidarity as can be reconciled with justice and liberty."

Ignatieff's book is not light reading, in particular because the term "need" is not part of our familiar political vocabulary. Another reason is that Ignatieff is writing against the grain of our times. He speaks about our silences: our "silence about the meaning of death," meaning our having shelved the ultimate questions; our silence about human solidarity and dignity, meaning our having relegated all responsibility for the needs of strangers to the welfare system. In our silences, he fears, we risk becoming strangers to our better selves: "Our needs are made of words: they come to us in speech, and they can die for lack of expression. Without a public language to help find us our own words, our needs will dry up in silence. It is words only, the common meanings they bear, which give me the right to speak in the name of the strangers at my door. Without a language adequate to this moment we risk losing ourselves in resignation towards the portion of life which has been allotted to us." Or put more bluntly: if we speak only the language of profit and consumption, we will never learn to speak of what we can be as individuals and human beings.

For once, I fully agree with the blurb on the cover of a book: Incisive and moving, "The Needs of Strangers" returns philosophy to its proper place, as a guide to the art of being human.

Michael Ignatieff did an excellent job with this biography of Sir Isaiah Berlin - one of the XXth-century most erudite and insightful thinkers. What attracts me about this book is the fact that it is not only about Berlin's outward life, which was so filled with events. But it is also about his inward life - life of his spirit, mind, and ideas. Which life was more amazing hard to judge. He was born in the middle class Jewish family. His family home was in the Baltic city of Riga, then in the Russian Empire. After few years in Petrograd (where he witnessed the Revolution) he went to England as a teenager and consequently rose to the position of the most celebrated British intellectual in Oxford. Berlin's life was long and basically happy. Some of his less fortunate relatives had perished in Riga, and Berlin sometimes was embarrassed how fortunate he was compared to others. Ignatieff had been meeting with Berlin for ten years in London to record his memories and to write his biography, which, according to Berlin's terms wouldn't be published while he was still alive. Another attractive feature of the book for me was both (Ignatieff and Berlin) love for Russian culture. Berlin new Russia deeply, was steeped in Russian culture and language. His favorite writers were mostly Russian, particularly he admired Ivan Tugrenev. Ignatieff didn't mention this in this book, but from his other book ('The Russian Album'), it is clear why he felt particular empathy for Berlin - Ignatieff's father came to Canada from Russia. His father had to go to exile after the Russian revolution almost at the same age as Berlin. There is clearly a deep Russian connection, which united these too men (besides their Oxford connection). Although Berlin thought all his life about idea of liberty, he wasn't a liberal, at least not in the modern English meaning of the word. He was a free thinker, who refused to subscribe to any ideology. He was 'peddling his own canoe' all his life, gaining enemies on the left and on the right. Unique thing about him was how he combined his British, Jewish, and Russian sides in himself without compromising any of these thee faucet of his life, but rather tapping from them creativity and insight.
A must read for anyone interested in Berlin's life, history of ideas, and Russian history buffs.
However, I am removing one star because of the author's several slippages about historic detail. Thus, for example, on page 30 Ignatieff seem to forget that Soviet Union hasn't been yet in existence in 1920 (there was Soviet Russia). Otherwise, this is a book of merit.

Michael Ignatieff spent many hours with Isaiah Berlin over the ten years before Berlin's death, aged 88, in 1997, and the frank portrait that emerges in this book is of a very human intellectual with a deep attachment to liberty. The book traces Berlin's life from his early years in Riga and revolutionary St. Petersburg, and his family's flight to England, to his sure rise through the hallowed halls of Oxford and the Foreign Office to the very pinnacles of the British academic establishment. Berlin quickly put aside the sterility of formal philosophical debate and engaged himself in a life-long study of the history of ideas, and in particular the evolution of liberal thought. Berlin's overwhelming interest was in people, and the book catalogues his varied encounters with a gallery of huge personalities over the course of the century. The reader catches glimpses of Churchill, Kennedy, and literary giants such as Anna Akhmatova. Berlin's persona is part Russian Jew, part Englishman of letters, and Ignatieff draws out the contradictions and felicitous harmonies in this cultural mixture. Berlin had an unerring knack for being in the right place at the right time, and in distilling Berlin's extraordinary life, Ignatieff provides a lively overview of a century of ideas. An excellent read.

I just finished reading "Isaiah Berlin" and must say that it is one of the finest books I have ever read. The story of Mr. Berlin's life if fascinating, from his childhoon in Russia and England, to his education, his service in the Foreign Office during WWII, his meetings with Boris Pasternak and Anna Akhmatova, his career as an Oxford don, etc. Mr. Ignatieff tells the story, interspersed with the substance of his developing philosophical views, with warmth and insight. Even if you care not for philosophy (and I generally do not), this book deserves attention simply because it is a wonderful life and well told.

Ignatieff makes a clear difference between the ethnic and civic nationalisms. While praising the latter, the author explains the roots and the consequences of the politics of ethnicity and belonging. He rightly points out that ethnic nationalism is based on division, while civic nationalism is based on the union of different peoples (such as the case in the United States). But what Ignatieff fails to realize is that civic nationalism can be as dangerous, cruel and vicious as ethnic nationalism. Another weakness of the book is that its six examples, except Kurdistan, reflect conspicuously the purely European views and practices of nationalism. It is true that "nationalism" as a political ideology was developed by the German romantics, but the essence of nationalism has its roots since times immemorial. Finally, the book contains a couple of factual mistakes: Iranian Air Force does not have Mirages!

This is a great book for either the student or general public to educate themselves on some political "hotspots" of the past several years. Ignatieff illustrates his knowledge in easy-to-read vocabulary and it helps to create vivid pictures in your mind of these countrie's situations. If one thinks one knows all about the former-Yugoslavia and Northern Ireland than one might want to read this book. I learned things about Kurdistan in this book that I never knew before. In conclusion, talented writer, great book.

First published in 1993, Michael Ignatieff's work focuses on nationalism in the post-Cold War world and identifies a crucial trend that is still encompassing every continent: where new nation-states are being forged and born, nationalism is the driving force, the backbone of this trend. It is far from being outdated or irrelevant in any way, and although nationalism brings identity and belonging, Ignatieff argues, it also is a harbinger of bloodshed. To demonstrate, he has taken a personal journey throughout the world and homed in on six separate nations in which nationalism is an issue, perhaps a rampant one. Each of these six case studies is a detailed chapter, a portrait of nationalism in practice. To use Ignatieff's own definition: "As a political doctrine, nationalism is the belief that the world's peoples are divided into nations, and that each of these nations has the right of self-determination, either as self-governing units within existing nation states or as nation states of their own" (p. 3). Culturally, nationalism provides men and women "with their primary form of belonging" (Ibid.). Morally, it can serve to be an "ethic of heroic sacrifice, justifying the use of violence in the defense of one's nation against enemies, internal or external" (Ibid.).

In his Introduction, Ignatieff identifies two types of nationalism: (1) Civic nationalism, in which the predominant belief is that all those within a nation who subscribe to the nation's political creed should be its citizens; and (2) Ethnic nationalism, in contrast, holds to the idea that belonging and attachment to a nation is inherited, not chosen; "It is the national community which defines the individual, not the individuals who define the national community" (p. 5).

As the book is from Ignatieff's personal perspective, it becomes all the more interesting; part-memoir, part-journalism. His journey in examining and chronicling instances of nationalism in practice begins in the former Yugoslavia, where Croat and Serb nationalism is the backbone behind the creation of two new Balkan states, and a host of highly-destructive and de-stabilizing warfare, committed in the name of preservation and righteousness of Serbia and Croatia. From there he moves on to a newly-reunified Germany, and shows the reactions of a reunified East and West, two peoples that share a common blood and identity, yet were separated for nearly fifty years as two separate countries. In that time, separate growth of identity, outlook (and nationalism) entrenched itself on both sides...so what is the reaction of the two, who overnight, are back together again, after fifty dark years? Germany is confronted with either turning toward a civic nationalist future, or returning to its ethnic nationalist past while trying to contain a virulent nationalism known to many as Neo-Nazism. A similar scenario can be found in the Ukraine, Ignatieff's third destination, where for the majority of the 20th Century, its people lived under Soviet rule. What happens when autonomy comes, and there remain traces of the old order (ethnic Russian citizens) and the new nation (ethnic Ukrainians)?

In the fourth case study, Ignatieff leaves Europe and comes to Canada, where he examines the ongoing issue of separatism in the predominantly French province of Quebec. This example is more outstanding and noteworthy because it is different: Quebec is already part of a vast, highly industrialized nation and practices a great deal of autonomy within the Canadian framework. Why do the Quebecois, obsessed with cultural and linguistic self-determination and distinction, still press for outright autonomy from Canada, even though they face grave prospects, not to mention an existing Aboriginal national voice from within? For the reviewer, a Canadian, this case is all the more relevant because it is close to home.

Ignatieff turns to Kurdistan, an illegitimate nation-state where its ethnic group, the Kurds, fight constantly with neighbors and even themselves to create their own nation; what do they want, and what kind of nationalism is driving this desire? Ending off in Northern Ireland, a land infamous among newsgroups for pipe bombs and terrorists and constantly-rivaling nationalism (Republican and Loyalist), Ignatieff looks at these long-standing and fighting nationalists, Protestant Loyalists who want to remain British versus the Irish Republican Army (IRA), the most violent terrorist group in Western Europe today.

Ignatieff ends off with these words: "What's wrong with the world is not nationalism itself...What's wrong is the kind of a nation, the kind of home that nationalists want to create and the means they use to seek their ends" (p. 189). A revealing and rewarding book for everyone, it remains as relevant in this global village as it was almost ten years ago when first written. Once again, Michael Ignatieff has hit gold, and has created a masterpiece in the process.

Michael Ignatieff's 1994 novel Scar Tissue is the story of two brothers, one a neurologist and the other a philosophy professor, coming to grips with their aged mother's descent into a wasting neurological disorder (Alzheimers?). Neither philosophy or science are able to make sense of the illness, and the question ultimately becomes how the narrator and his brother are to carry on in the face of the inexplicable. This is a sensitive story, finely told.

"I could call this the history of my family as the history of our characteristic illness. I could also call it the history of an illness as the history of one family", says Michael Ignatieff at the outset of his novel Scar Tissue. Although the author has built himself a reputation as a scholarly historian, biographer and culture chronicler, this book is by no means a vapid academic exercise. To the contrary, in barely 200 pages the author paints a very personal and infernal journey to the extremities of human life.

The book can be read in different ways. First it is a detailed account of the dynamics of a particular pathology. The narrator describes step by step how his mother is overpowered by a mysterious illness and how it gradually dismantles her personality. Here, Ignatieff's prose can be very moving. The description of his youth is suffused with a fragile, arcadian light, contrasting effectively with the searching, melancholy figures of father and mother. The dramatic clair-obscur is tastefully woven into the fabric of the whole novel and lends a poetic tension to the work.

Additionally, the confrontation with a devastating neurological illness forms the basis for a compelling philosophical investigation. In this sense, the book draws the contours of a few classical questions in personality theory. What is a person? When has someone reached the point of psychic regression where the 'I' has been dissolved? Can human identity be reduced to a particular neurochemical balance, or is there more than only organic substance? In Scar Tissue, Michael Ignatieff explicitly confronts two distinct philosophical positions - materialism and idealism - with the mystery of life and death. The narrator, philosopher, and his brother, neurophysiologist, are proxy for these two different types of rationality: "As my father used to say, 'Your brother has a propositional intelligence.' Meaning he had a way of reasoning that viewed ordinary life and its problems from an altitude of 40,000 feet. Whereas, my father said, I had 'an autobiographical intelligence', which was his way of saying I had a scatty female mind, interested in gossip and personal details and stories and character, things he didn't have time for.' So, a Platonic, conceptual and scientific way of thinking and an Aristotelian, pragmatic and context-sensitive rationality are crushing their teeth on the abyssmal problem of fate and death. Maybe, at the end of the story, we are witness to some sort of synthesis: "Human identity is neurochemical. Infinitely small amounts of neurotransmitter fluid, microscopic levels of electrical charge make the difference between selfhood and loss. Sanity is finely poised. Fate is measured in pica-litres. On the other hand, fate is beautiful. Feel the slow beating descent of its black wings.'

The book's finale may seem a little contrived: pushed completely out of his existential balance, the narrator undertakes a radical quest for selflessness, an intentional destruction of his own person, into a state of pure emptiness. However, it seems to me this is another level at which Scar Tissue can be read: ultimately, in its appeal to the symbolism of death and rebirth, the story develops a logic akin to an initiation rite. Ignatieff's state of pure vacancy and selflessness corresponds to the embryonic condition, a prerequisite for each regeneration (Mircea Eliade's The Sacred and the Profane is useful background reading here). On the final page, the author prepares for the final part of the journey: "But I know that there is a life beyond this death, a time beyond this time. I know that at the very last moment, when everything I ever knew has been effaced from my mind, when pure vacancy has taken possession of me, then light of the purest whiteness will stream in through my eyes into the radiant and empty plain of my mind." And then back to the magnificent motto from the hand of John Milton:
"So by this infirmity may I be perfected, by this completed. So in this darkness, may I be clothed in light."

A somewhat fictionalized but still true-to-life story of the illness and death of writer philosopher Ignatieff's mother of Alzheimer's Disease. The point made most clearly is the degree to which this disease infects not the patient but the caregiver with fear and sorrow.

Ignatieff's credibility, particularly in the field of human rights, is forever tarnished by his marked appeasement of Serb ethnic cleansers in Bosnia several years ago. It is only because Bosnia was ignored, and those responsible never held accountable, that their appeasers still publish and get read. I recommend, for those who want some perpective on Ignatieff, to read his works pertaining to the Balkans written during the period 1992-1995.

Ignatieff offers a measured, limited, and explicitly political, i.e., dialogic, nondogmatic, nonmetaphysical, pragmatic, approach to human rights advocacy and questions of international jurisdiction. Excellent, compelling, convincing. I can't say I'm entirely convinced, mind you. One surprise is that I found Appiah's essay--I am a great admirer of Appiah and, in my estimation, his reply to Taylor in _Multiculturalism: The Politics of Recognition_ is among the finest essays ever written--unconvincing, particularly with regards to the question of "rights and majorities." On this, see Jeremy Waldron's _Law and Disagreement_.

The important question one has to ask before picking up this book is why anyone would feel confortable relying on the opinion of a commentator whose name was so closely associated with the word "appeasement" when war and genocide were raging in Bosnia. The fact that Ignatieff was one of the equivocators who had little to chose between Karadzic and Mladic and their victims will taint him the rest of his life.
Ironicaly, he is now advertised as a human rights scholar, albeit a human rights scholar who opposed intervation to stop the Serb sponsored genocide in Bosnia, which took 250,000 lives and culminated in the masacre of Srebrenica. Ignatieff now has the good sense to change his tone, even though Kosovo presents no stronger a case for intervention than Bosnia did. This is the overiding question that Ignatieff does not answer. Why does he now support intervention within the sovereignty of a state, and yet opposed it when Bosnia was attacked in a trans-state conflict? The answer is clear, he has realized the error of his ways, a matter that Ignatieff should have the courage the face up to. It would make for an interesting book or article: the well meaning, often Serb biased Yugoslav experts who, when confronted with the worst human rights abuses seen in Europe since the Second World War, fumbled the ball miserably.
Overall, not a very engaging book, from a discredited personality, who failed the Bosnians miserably.

I bought this book a couple of years ago but did not get around to reading it until last week, shortly after the war in Iraq ended (more or less). I was curious to see what kind of perspective it would offer not only on the Kosovo campaign but on the war in Iraq. I found it both a useful refresher on a very different battle, the 79 day air campaign against Serbia, and an interesting meditation on modern war.

The front end of this book consists of a series of snapshots of different aspects of the war, along with a couple of arguments Ignatieff has with fellow intellectuals. Several reviewers on this site wrote that they couldn't see the connection between these bits of reportage with the latter half of the book, which is an extended essay on aspects of modern, "virtual" war. I think they're perhaps not trying very hard, as the longer essay quite obviously tackles in a disciplined fashion the themes raised in the reportage--international law, the revolution in military affairs, values, societal support or the lack thereof for political decisions to move toward war.

Ignatieff is often clear-thinking. It is a bit startling to read this book, written in 1999-2000, talking about the merits of regime change in places like Iraq and Serbia/FRY. He is likewise prophetic in noting how the revolution in military affairs created an incentive for the Saddams of the world to seek a countervailing military threat in the form of chemical and biological weapons.

Where he is perhaps a bit less far-sighted is in failing to see that the precedent of a "virtual war" in Kosovo--by which he means a zero-casualty, low-cost war (for the attacking side only, of course), that is not legitimised by international law or blessed by the kind of domestic support that must be whipped up to permit a high-cost, full mobilization "real war", with real casualties on both sides--could be used to support not only human rights' causes but narrower interests.

Overall this is a book well worth reading. I'd recommend it to anyone interested in understanding what goes into a modern war.

Clearly Michael Ignatieff is a gifted writer, but the theme throughout this book did not string together that well. Ignatieff had some great insights into the diplomacy building up to the Kosovo air campaign (i.e. gaining valuable insight into Holbrooke's shuttle diplomacy), but some of the observations, particularly those in the last chapter beg questioning.

The repercussions of a zero casualty conflict will reverberate throughout the US defense establishment for years to come and will certainly set benchmarks, warranted or not for future conflicts. But sacrifice in battle will be supported by the American public if the situation warrants. The war in Afghanistan bears this point out to an extent.

The dialogue between Skidelsky and Ignatieff was interesting, as was the return of Ignatieff to Belgrade to meet his longtime friend Aleksa Djilas. This dialogue portrayed the extent to which people such as Skidelsky and Djilas would like to look past the atrocities committed by the like of Milosevic, at the expense of Western intervention.

I rated the book three stars only because I didnt see the common thread throughout the book...merely a series of collected essays that may or may not have had anything to do with the subject "virtual war". THe book does add some interesting insight into Holbrooke's dealings with Milosevic, but could have delved more into discussions with Gen Clark and perhaps Lt Gen Mike Short, the Joint Forces AIr Component Commander, on the extent the "virtual war" was or was not fought both on the battlefield, in the media and in the political realm.