i bought this book for two reasons: the content and its shape. i like photojournalistic books but this book is groundbraking !!!!! the book itself is a fantastic object 1" thick, 16" long and 5" wide held together by two stainless steel screws. the layout is very effective and the book seems a natural extensions of the narative. everything is clear in place and easy to understand. there are no misteries here. the case against milosevic is made following the 4 counts of his indictment and each one has photographs to support it. not only photographs by gary knight but also photographs takes by serbs that are strongly presented on a 4 page foul out. the captions are cleverly placed at the end of each section and are revelatory about the contenet of the book, not just date and place but stories that make the photographs so real and powerful. a great book. buy it without esitation.

I chose this book with the goal of comprehending the conflict in the Balkans. Loyd is an excellent writer with an eye for detail and a gift to deliver the big picture. After finishing the book, I feel that I have a much better understanding of the events, and I am horrified. Some reviews comment on the lack of pictures (odd indeed for a photo journalist), but I'm personally thankful to have been spared an eyeful of the atrocities, tragedies and pain lobbied back and forth between these factions. More than a journalist, Loyd is a writer and an adventurer, and this is his trip. Don't expect a straight forward history of the Balkans, it comes in doses, the story keeps a general chronological order, but there is temporal incongruence. It didn't bother me in the least. Also, this is Loyd's story. He intersperses accounts of his life in England, his distant father, his heroin habit. If anything, view these as extras. This is a brilliant account of the situation in the Balkans (with a terrifying chapter on Chechnya towards the end) and the author's personal vignettes should be savored and considered as a means to better understand the kind of man who day trips into other people's nightmares.

Few books I have read in life have captured and sustained my attention as much as this book. Perhaps it was because of the author's uncanny ability to plumb and describe so graphically the depths of human cruelty and suffering in the Bosnian and Chechnyan wars. It's sometimes easy to forget how sick the human race can be, especially when our hatred of others is motivated by the age old forces of religion, nationalism or greed. Fortunately, Loyd laces his first-hand account of the killings, woundings, rapes and an tortures which characterized so much of these conflicts with unexpected humor and an unusual grace. In addition, he seems to be as balanced and fair as any journalist with a conscience or sense of decency can be in reporting on the relative moral blameworthiness of the various warring parties, the comments below of the apparent apologist for the Bosnian Croats notwithstanding. Finally, I must confess that Loyd's parallel story of his discovery and use of heroin gave this reader at least a unique insight into the equally dangerous attraction heroin seems to have for certain people. On the other hand, it also seemed odd, if not a tad unbelievable, that Loyd, who so often flirted with death in Bosnia and Chechnya, apparently never injected heroin, but was merely a "dragon chaser." I suppose it would have been a little too unbecoming for a correspondent for the London Times to admit to geezing smack. Anyway, if you are a war junkie or just a plain old dope junkie, this is definitely a must read.

This beautifully written memoir brings home some very unpleasant truths: war can be fun and addicting (along with horrific and repulsive); the casual abandonment of social constraint can be fun and liberating; and after too much fun it is difficult to downshift into "normal" society (so self-medicate). It is an extraordinarily passionate and personal book, and evokes equally intense reactions in its readers as the reviews attest.

It is not too hard to jump from Anthony Loyd's discomfited Englishman looking for his place in the world to the thousands of muhajideen wandering through the Balkans and Central Asia looking for theirs. Post 9/11 we may be dealing with thousands of these war addicts for years to come.

The chapter on Chechnya, in which Loyd temporarily leaves the Balkans for the even higher dosage action in Grosny (in which the Russians reportedly hit the city with 30,000 shells in a single day) is the worth the price of the book alone. It puts the far more modest US bombing campaign in Afghanistan into a certain perspective.

In the end, this book is so intense that it is difficult to write about it at all. Read it and see for yourself.