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In the Corridors of Samantha Power: A Realist View of Values in International Affairs

a book review essay of The Education of an Idealist, by Samantha Power

 

by Jamie Arbuckle for Peacehawks

 

… the Furies might sometimes sleep, but they were there, always there in the dark corners, and now they were awake and the iron clang of their wings was in her brain …

- Edith Wharton,  The Reef,  (1912)

 Introduction

 

Since the publication in 2002 of her Pulitzer Prize winning book  A Problem from Hell,  which explored American actions and inaction in responding to genocides from Armenia to Kosovo, Samantha Power has been one of the world’s foremost and effective chroniclers of human rights.  In her journalism, in her several books, in her teaching and in her work, she has tirelessly and courageously exposed the deeds and misdeeds of those, mostly governments, who abuse and persecute, mostly their own people.  This, after having devoted so much of her life and her career to the stories of others, is finally her story, and it is well worth reading.

 

This book is, before everything, an autobiography, and that is in a sense a pity. Peacehawks is generally more interested in events than in personalities; we care more about what happened and why than we care about who was there, still less who is to blame. That is not to say those latter are of no consequence, but they are not our primary interest. The presence and the actions of Richard Holbrooke are of lesser consequence to the Dayton Accords which ended the war –  but not the conflict – in Bosnia Hercegovina.  We say it is a pity that this excellent book is so personally autobiographical, because it might otherwise have been a splendid vehicle to educate in more depth about the circumstances and the agencies, the stakeholders and the players in those years preamble to and beginning our young and already-tattered century.

 

We will first review the book she did write – and then we’ll discuss the book we hope she still might write.

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A BOOK WITH A VIEW: A REVIEW OF ROSE OF SARAJEVO, By Ayse Kulin

Kindle edition, published by AmazonCrossing, Seattle
Originally published by Remzi Kitabevi, Istanbul, 1999
Reviewed for Peacehawks by Jamie Arbuckle

Introduction

The author describes her book succinctly and accurately in her introduction:

This book tells the story of the heroic and honorable people who survived the horrendous war in Bosnia that took place from April 5, 1992 to February 26, 1996, during which Sarajevo was held under siege for 1,395 days, without regular electricity, communications or water. Ten thousand six hundred Bosniaks – of whom 1,600 were children – lost their lives. Those who survived were pressured to accept the Dayton Agreement.   With this treaty, 51 per cent of Bosnia was left to Bosnia and Herzegovina, while the Serbs, who comprised only 34 percent of the population before the war, gained 49 per cent of the land. (location 31).

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