1992 and 1993 will be remembered as the years in which a European country was destroyed. It was a land with a political and cultural history unlike any other, where the great religions and powers had overlapped and combined - Rome, Charlemagne, the Ottomans and the Austro-Hungarians. Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Judaism and Islam. But this rich past has become shrouded in a fog of ignorance and misinformation. In this book, Balkan specialist and political commentator Noel Malcolm elucidates the myths and historical fallacies that have dominated not only media coverage of the war, but also, more shockingly, the words and actions of Western statesmen. In particular, he explodes the claim that the war was the inevitable consequence of ancient ethnic hatreds and shows that the causes of Bosnia's destruction came from outside itself - first through the strategy of the Serbian leadership, and then through the fatal miscomprehension and interference of Western politicians.