Belgrade: Among the Serbs

In this rare attempt to convey the Serbian side in the Bosnian war, freelance journalist Levinsohn (Harold Washington: A Political Biography) restricts herself mostly to interviewing Belgrade's prominent intellectuals, providing a platform for their views on the breakup of the former Yugoslavia, the Serbian leadership, the effects of the UN embargo and the local black-market economy. She explores the Serbs' strong sense of victimhood, which is based on centuries of oppression, and her overriding aim is to counter the prevailing Western view of the Serbs as primitive and murderous. But one wishes she had spent more time talking with ``the others.'' Citing no documentation, Levinsohn claims to have learned from an unimpeachable source that the Bosnian Muslims and Croats each paid the American PR firm Ruder Finn $30,000 a month to publicize their side of the war. (Oct.)