My War Criminal

Personal Encounters with an Architect of Genocide

By: Jessica Stern

Narrated by: Suzie Althens

An investigation into the nature of violence, terror, and trauma through conversations with a notorious war criminal and hero to white nationalists.

Between October 2014 and November 2016, global terrorism expert Jessica Stern held a series of conversations in a prison cell in The Hague with Radovan Karadzic, a Bosnian Serb former politician who had been indicted for genocide and other war crimes during the Bosnian War and who became an inspiration for white nationalists. Though Stern was used to interviewing terrorists in the field in an effort to understand their hidden motives, the conversations she had with Karadzic would profoundly alter her understanding of the mechanics of fear, the motivations of violence, and the psychology of those who perpetrate mass atrocities at a state level and who—like the terrorists she had previously studied—target noncombatants, in violation of ethical norms and international law.

How do leaders persuade ordinary people to kill their neighbors? What is the “ecosystem” that creates and nurtures genocidal leaders? Could anything about their personal histories, personalities, or exposure to historical trauma shed light on the formation of a war criminal’s identity in opposition to a targeted Other?

In My War Criminal, Jessica Stern brings to bear her incisive analysis and her own deeply considered reactions to her interactions with Karadzic, a brilliant and often shockingly charming psychiatrist and poet who spent twelve years in hiding, disguising himself as an energy healer, while also offering a deeply insightful and sometimes chilling account of the complex and even seductive powers of a magnetic leader—and what can happen when you spend many, many hours with that person.

Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.

Brilliant, an expert on terror on Karadzic

I think it's clear, having finished this book in one sitting, with my own prior political science education and specifically on the Bosnian War, that the Audible reviews were posted by people who didn't read the whole book, or people who knew nothing of the author's personal and professional expertise and have some bizarre ax to grind. Ignore them. Stern is an effing brilliant woman who is making a brilliant and timely point that in spite of her professional and familial, as well as personal experiences, was nonetheless able to find Karadzic compelling while meeting with him, and if that could happen to her, it could happen with other demagogic and dangerous leaders to anyone.

Don't Bother

This author makes clear within the first few chapters that she is the absolute WRONG person to be doing this interview. I would say this is like Clarice Starling going in to speak with Lecter for the first time, completely unprepared, but at least Clarice had /some/ training and poise. This woman is paranoid, obsessed, and has no idea how to interact with others, let alone how to interview a man accused of war crimes. She is intimidated by the accusations against this man to the point that she's easily manipulated by him. She might claim to have been trained as a psychologist or whatever, but the way she writes about this, she had to have nearly failed to obtain that degree....

All that AND she's constantly alluding to Trump and comparing him to the 'charismatic' leaders of the socialist revolutions throughout history. You learn so much more about her weak mentality than you ever do about the man the book is purportedly about. She might think she has the big brain to analyze his every breath, but she most certainly does NOT.

Narrator is good though...

Not a book about the Bosnian war

If you are looking to learn more about the civil war in the 90s this is not the right book for you. The author reveals twice as much about herself and her feelings than she does the target of her interview. Towards the end it takes a worse turn when the book all of a sudden becomes about Donald Trump for some unknown reason. Well performed but lacks information. It’s more of the authors diary.