2001 02 03 book reviews

The very controversial topic of the uniqueness of the Holocaust is also brought up in The Holocaust Industry. The Holocaust is unique but at the same time is one case of genocide, not The Genocide as Elie Wiesel announced. This point is expressed by many Jewish American scholars, but is ignored by Finkelstein. To make a selective choice of arguments that suits the thesis is not difficult, and Finkelstein makes excessive use of certain arguments and manipulates many facts (e.g. listing the books of Jerzy Kosinski and Beniamin Wilkomirski as fiction, not biography).

Holocaust memoralization is present not only in the US. In countries without a strong Jewish lobby, and even those with very small Jewish populations, societies call for the young generations to be taught about the Nazi evil, about the destruction of almost the whole of European Jewry, and about the different attitudes of European societies toward the Holocaust during World War II. This is a process which started in many countries only after the fall of communism. There are still more facts to study, more topics to teach, and Finkelstein's book will definitely not obstruct this process.

The Culture of Power in Serbia: Nationalism and the Destruction of Alternatives, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999, 230 pp., USD 17.95, ISBN 0-271-01958-1 (pbk).

Reviewed by Sinisa Malesevic (National University Of Ireland, Galway) The main aim of this book is to explain an interesting paradox of contemporary Serbian history: Why and how has Milosevic and his Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) managed to remain in power for more than a decade despite the policies that brought total economic collapse and ruin, four war defeats, undelivered promises of 'Serbian national unification' and absolute international isolation and condemnation?

This is obviously a great political and sociological puzzle of our times and a substantial historical distance is needed to provide a full and generally acceptable explanation. In the last decade or so events were (and are still) happening at such a speed that very persuasive and highly regarded accounts quickly become dated, incomplete, superficial or simply irrelevant. This book certainly will not be immune to this inevitability: the fact that just two years after its publication Serbia has experienced war with NATO, a revolution that overthrew Milosevic and SPS from power, Milosevic's sending to the Hague, and the near collapse of the ruling DOS coalition, might make some analyses and conclusions in this book dated or questionable.