September 2006. My War Gone By. I Miss it So, by Anthony Loyd. This was by far the toughest book we have read in the book club. It was tough in that the story was told with such unblinking frankness and detail. Loyd's book is his first hand account as a war correspondent in Bosnia in 1992-1995, during the height of the two- to three-way bloody conflict.  This book fills in some gaps for the readers who have read something about the conflict in the Balkans from the 50000 feet perspective. Loyd's story is from ground level. I found this book hard to put down.  As a photojournalist, the author sought out some of the most savages places in the conflict to be an observer and chronicler from Sarajevo under Serb sniper fire, to a frantic retreat with Bosnian Muslim forces from being overrun by Bosnian Serbs in Western Bosnia. The author also spent some time in Chechnya reporting on the systematic leveling of Groznyy by the Russian military (again, giving the view from ground level). The book is also very much an autobiography of a man coming to grips with many personal demons (drugs, alcohol, disfunctional family...) from which savage combat was both an escape and a tonic. For those people wanting to know what happened in Bosni between 1992 and the implementation of the Dayton Peace Accord in 1995, I think that this is a "must-read" along with  Richard Holbrooke's To End a War and Misha Gleeny's The Fall of Yugoslavia. All three books give a different perspective on the Bosnian War which itself cannot be easily explained by a single perspective. Here's a link to some slides of Yugoslav history that might also be helpful. [LINK] Back to reading list
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