(Fwd) [raccoon-announce] New book: "Be Not Afraid for You Have

[Ivo Skoric]

Wednesday, July 7, 7 pm. Book presentation at Raccoon Space.
http://balkansnet.org/prostor.html
"Be Not Afraid for You Have Sons in America: How a Brooklyn Roofer 
Helped Lure the U.S. into the Kosovo War." by Stacy Sullivan

I thought you would be interested in knowing about the publication of
Stacy Sullivan's new book, "Be Not Afraid for You Have Sons in
America: How a Brooklyn Roofer Helped Lure the U.S. into the Kosovo
War."  This book breaks new ground in its telling of a little known
side of the Kosovo story full of relevance to America's military
activities today. Some of you may know Stacy Sullivan through her
writing on the Balkans for Newsweek, the New York Times and other
publications.  She spent years reporting and writing this book, and
from what I've read in the book so far, it was well worth the wait. 
In case you are interested, what follows are a few reviews and 
previews of "Be  Not Afriad for You Have Sons in America."  Please 
feel free to  forward this message to anyone you think would be 
interested.
Very best wishes,
Sheri Fink

Amazon link:  
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0312285582/qid=1086148421/sr=2-
1/ref=sr_2_1/104-4343096-1843133

“As timeless as it is compelling. She chronicles the awful 
machinery of war, the high idealism and base cynicism, the brutal 
politics and utopian visions, that propel young men into battlefields 
and often leave them broken and scarred. She captures through her 
dogged reporting, the dark and frightening labyrinth of war.”  
Chris Hedges

“Thanks to years of reporting, Stacy Sullivan has managed to hunt
down the inside story of how a Brooklyn roofer helped launch a
guerrilla army in the Balkans. With her remarkable tales of
gunrunning, intrigue, high politics, and murder, Sullivan has given 
us a work of contemporary history that reads more like a crime 
thriller.
She has also offered a disturbing glimpse behind the scenes of one of
the only wars ever waged on humanitarian grounds.”  Samantha Power

Publisher's Weekly Review:
The Kosovo Liberation Army was sparked and sustained by a roof
contractor in Brooklyn who personally bought and shipped arms,
massively fund-raised and provided ideological and tactical support 
to the fledgling guerrilla force. Sullivan, who covered the Balkans 
in the '90s for Newsweek, mixes reportage (sometimes reconstructed) 
of the insurgent group's battles with Milosevic's Serb forces after
Yugoslavia's disintegration with the KLA's improbable, U.S.-based
back-story, gleaned after the conflict was messily resolved by a
U.N.-led coalition (commandeered by Wesley Clark). She is terrific in
detailing the life of Florin Krasniqi, a Kosovar Albanian who
emigrated illegally to the U.S. via Mexico in 1988, and took it upon
himself to get the KLA off the ground once Milosevic's intentions 
(and the inefficacy of nonviolent resistance) became clear to him.
Anecdotes of buying assault weapons at gun shows and taking them to
Albania on conventional flights, of shopping for Stinger missiles in
Pakistan and of the Muslim Krasniqi getting a great price on uniforms
from Brooklyn Hasidim are as funny as they are unsettling. Snappily
written with a keen eye for telling personal tics and crushing
political ironies, Sullivan's book reveals that this crucial,
underreported event of the late 1990's was more multilateral than
anyone suspected.

Link to interview with Stacy Sullivan and Florin Krasniqi on the 
radio show "The World":  http://www.theworld.org/content/05278.wma