What happens when an author tries so strenuously to empathize with her subject that she loses control of her own book? ... It’s a question that kept coming to mind as I read My War Criminal ... mystifying ... The problem with My War Criminal is that Karadzic — a psychiatrist who wrote bad poetry before becoming the president of Bosnia’s hard-line Serbian nationalist party — apparently knows enough about her determination to write a book about him to turn her own method against her. Karadzic gets fashioned here into the charismatic character Stern so clearly wants him to be ... During the conversations, she deliberately avoided challenging Karadzic in any way ... Stern inflates the drama of her narrative ... More disconcerting than the awkward literary affectations is how Stern writes about the actual history of the war. Stern says she isn’t trying to deny a genocide, nor is she trying to redeem Karadzic. But in her attempts to 'follow his moral logic,' she entertains his tortured excuses and grotesque fantasies ... It’s exasperating to watch a smart woman play possum like this — not just in the interviews but in the writing, especially when her conclusions don’t tell us anything we didn’t know before.

... intriguing ... illuminate[s] a larger story about nationalism, fear, separatism, and dissension ... Ultimately, Stern draws chilling parallels between the war criminal and President Trump, including similarities in their tactics of fearmongering and ethnocentrism, and asks us to question our own moral dexterity and susceptibility to such ethical collapses.

... raises the question of when it is worthwhile to give an outlet to a war criminal and what risks are involved ... The problem is that Karadzic has no interest in seeking the truth about himself or anything he was involved in. He comes across clearly as a self-mythologizing narcissist and, as Stern and others describe, a fluent liar...This makes it practically impossible for Stern or her readers to learn anything significant from what Karadzic says beyond the heroic image he is determined to project ... Stern says she was alert to the risk that Karadzic would try to manipulate her, but she fails to prevent his self-serving approach from undermining her project ... [Stern's] reluctance to question him about the atrocities that were an integral part of the Bosnian Serb war campaign, on the grounds that he is likely to lie about them, creates a gap at the center of her narrative... Stern writes about herself with what seems like unflinching honesty and is unafraid to reveal her vulnerabilities, but the effect is incongruous. Her account of letting Karadzic practice bioenergetic healing on her and of her desire to be a good student with him, as well as other passages about his charisma, sit uncomfortably with his unwillingness to accept any responsibility for his crimes. Stern’s focus on her feelings may have seemed like a way to draw readers into her narrative, but it comes across as self-absorbed in comparison to the suffering that Karadzic helped cause ... Stern’s book seems to be motivated by a genuine concern about the dangers of virulent nationalism. But in the end, Karadzic does not offer the kind of reflection or insights into his actions that would justify the attention Stern pays to him.

The author allows readers to draw their own conclusions, suggesting that a sense of Serb nationalism drove Karadzic’s actions, leading him to believe that ethnic cleansing would ultimately create the new Serb order he desired. Stern’s book is a worthy complement to Robert Donia’s Radovan Karadzic: Architect of the Bosnian Genocide ... An informative work for academic collections supporting studies in Balkan history.

Stern quotes extensively from the large body of literature on the former Yugoslavia, and also explores such related topics as the legal definition of genocide, the international law on secession, the complexities of globalization and the “new man” that Communism hoped to create. These citations and digressions, often in lengthy footnotes, can lend the book the feel of a graduate school thesis, and some errors and false impressions creep in ... In an effort to be evenhanded and to consider all sides in the conflict (and perhaps because of her own expertise), Stern devotes more space than may be warranted to the question of the influence of fundamentalist jihadis on the (traditionally quite secular) Bosnian Muslim population ... [Stern] draws explicit, if somewhat superficial, connections to President Trump’s ability to play upon the concerns and prejudices of many Americans ... Yet most of the insights Stern gleans from the information she collects are more banal than illuminating ... Nor do we gain many new insights from Stern’s reports of her exchanges with Karadzic, which provide little sense of the intelligent, charismatic, yet amoral personality who was able to instigate mass atrocities ... she fails to convey the danger convincingly. Instead, Karadzic comes across as an unrepentant elderly man eager to defend his legacy to a curious interlocutor ... What is more, Stern’s interjections can seem oddly self-involved ... What we need to know is how to combat these tendencies before they become deadly — whether through education, strong institutions, early warning systems or other means. The genesis of terrorism may differ from that of nationalist demagogues. Still, with her understanding of terrorists and her experience in countering them, Stern might have provided us with some tools to inoculate populations against the kinds of fears and hatreds that can lead to genocide. But if My War Criminal accurately describes the problem, it brings us no closer to a solution.

...Stern comes across as reluctant to ask her subject the really hard questions. Stern says it’s because she didn’t want Karadzic to lie to her and she hoped that seeing things through his eyes would lead to some deeper truth. The problem is it never does ... Only toward the end of the book does Stern prick ever so gently at whatever sliver of morality she believes may be lurking inside Karadzic. 'Is there anything you regret?' she asks. Karadzic stares at her blankly. “No, I had to protect my people,” he responds. And there it’s left, the predictable slogans of a nationalist justifying the unthinkable, no more than we could have learned from the headlines ... Even the title of her book, My War Criminal, is unsettling, a caption to a two-year-long cerebral tug of war that disturbingly comes across as a quasi-intellectual love affair ... Over almost three hundred pages, Stern gives Karadzic a free hand to spin a self-serving story of his skills as a mystic with bioenergetic healing powers, a poet...a shrewd politician, a powerful orator capable of moving a mob, and, above all, the protector of the Serbian people ... I had come to Stern’s book hoping for greater insight and regrettably found none.

... scrupulously researched work by a skilled interviewer ... Ultimately, the author provides a subtle, powerful illustration of terror that resonates today, especially regarding the resurgent white supremacist movement. The deep, extensive footnotes and detailed timeline attest to Stern’s meticulous research ... An utterly compelling chronicle from a master scholar and clear writer.

... a fascinating and nuanced portrait ... Intriguingly self-reflective ... This eloquent and revelatory book provides essential insight not just into the Balkan wars, but into the mechanisms of genocide and ethnic hatred all over the world.