Swanee Hunt - Publisher's Weekly review

This Was Not Our War: Bosnian Women Reclaiming the Peace
Publisher's Weekly
December 6, 2004

Drawing on seven years of interviews, diplomatic and humanitarian work in the region and personal visits to Bosnia throughout the 1990s, Hunt--a former U.S. ambassador to Austria and founder of Women Waging Peace--presents the testimony of 26 women who survived the region's horrific upheavals. Hunt juxtaposes private moments with public meetings and differences of opinion with common convictions. Women speak wrenchingly and courageously about the fight to save their homes and protect their children; the decision to stay or flee; the attempt to preserve their own bodies and souls; and the ongoing challenge to rebuild their lives and society. (The book includes 32 color photos and two maps.) Despite differences of opinion on most other issues, Hunt's ethnically and religiously diverse interviewees all agree that political greed rather than obstinate ethnic hatred fueled the conflict. The director of the Women and Public Policy Program at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, Hunt succeeds in capturing, organizing and analyzing the complexities inherent in conversations with 26 very different people during and after an abhorrent war. "Life goes on, and life wins," says Mediha Filipovic, the only female member of parliament in the first Bosnian national assembly and Bosnia's current ambassador to Sweden. Readers will be inspired by her courage, and that of the others here, in saying so. Agent, John Taylor Williams. (Jan.)