{"id":2045,"date":"2016-11-06T06:13:11","date_gmt":"2016-11-06T12:13:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wilsonld.com\/weblog\/?p=2045"},"modified":"2016-11-08T06:43:33","modified_gmt":"2016-11-08T12:43:33","slug":"origins-of-a-catastrophe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/?p=2045","title":{"rendered":"Origins of a Catastrophe"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Origins of a Catastrophe<\/em>, by Warren Zimmerman, 1999, Times Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York<\/p>\n<p>Warren Zimmerman was the last U.S. ambassador to Yugoslavia and the Balkan War broke out in the 1990&#8217;s.\u00c2\u00a0 The book relates his meetings with the\u00c2\u00a0leaders of the various \u00c2\u00a0republics (Slovenia, Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia) that split from Yugoslavia and he provides his assessment of their personalities and ideologies.\u00c2\u00a0 In fact the book is a little bit like a memoir in addition to a historical work.<\/p>\n<p>This book was a very hard read for me as the names were hard to keep track of and I didn&#8217;t know much about these countries or their histories.\u00c2\u00a0 Although I have rated this book fairly high due to its content, I found myself having a hard time staying with it\u00c2\u00a0 In fact, I usually started to fall asleep while reading it after only a few pages.<\/p>\n<p>The most startling conclusion that I came to after reading this was the damage that\u00c2\u00a0certain individuals can inflict on their fellow countrymen when they implement their intentions, particularly when their intentions are fused with a extreme nationalistic ideology.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0In our recent presidential campaign here in the U.S. one\u00c2\u00a0of our candidates has professed\u00c2\u00a0strong nationalistic views, i.e., America First.\u00c2\u00a0 As I read this book\u00c2\u00a0I was struck by how similar the personalities and ideology of Slobodan Milosevic and \u00c2\u00a0Donald Trump seem to be.\u00c2\u00a0 Both seem to have had a strong dislike of foreigners, want to control the press (media), and harbor feelings that they have been somehow wronged by their enemies.\u00c2\u00a0 These are all the characteristics of a demagogue.\u00c2\u00a0 Scary.<\/p>\n<p>While I greatly appreciate Zimmerman&#8217;s analysis of what caused the breakup of Yugoslavia and the subsequent wars, it was a bit depressing to read while at the same time our own presidential election was underway.\u00c2\u00a0 Both of these together was\u00c2\u00a0a bit\u00c2\u00a0too hard to take.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" title=\"4 stars\" src=\"https:\/\/www.wilsonld.com\/weblog\/wp-includes\/images\/stars-4-0.gif\" alt=\"4 stars\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Origins of a Catastrophe, by Warren Zimmerman, 1999, Times Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York Warren Zimmerman was the last U.S. ambassador to Yugoslavia and the Balkan War broke out in the 1990&#8217;s.\u00c2\u00a0 The book relates his <span class=\"excerpt-dots\">&hellip;<\/span> <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/?p=2045\"><span class=\"more-msg\">Continue reading &rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,14],"tags":[20,18,16,38],"class_list":["post-2045","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-four-star","tag-history","tag-memoir","tag-non-fiction","tag-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2045","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2045"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2045\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2046,"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2045\/revisions\/2046"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2045"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2045"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2045"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}