This remarkable book combines analysis and memoir to offer the unique perspective of an informed insider who lived through Yugoslavia's demise. Cvijeto Job witnessed his country's history as a committed partisan in WWII, a member of the Yugoslav Communist Party, and a career ambassador. His powerful and provocative story of Yugoslavia's birth, rise, and brutal destruction is told in tandem with the experiences of his family and friends as they made political choices that would change their lives forever.

Intertwining his family history with the evolution of the Yugoslav Idea, Job probes knowledgeably and deeply into the causes and legacies of Yugoslavia's ruin. The result is a sober assessment of the successes and unflinching critique of the failures of Tito's Yugoslavia and how policies that were intended to ameliorate the country's ethnic tensions were corrupted or abandoned, ending in its undoing. Job argues passionately for the intervention of the international community in Yugoslavia and offers constructive and concrete suggestions for preventing future ethnic atrocities.

Anyone reading this book will come to think more deeply about the ways in which the web of history and collective political culture weave the fates of nations and individuals in times of crisis.