Author: Peter Maass

I was born and raised in Los Angeles. In 1983, after graduating from the University of California at Berkeley, I went to Brussels as a copy editor for The Wall Street Journal/Europe. I left the Journal in 1985 to write for The New York Times and The International Herald Tribune, covering NATO and the European Union. In 1987 I moved to Seoul, South Korea, where I wrote primarily for The Washington Post. After three years in Asia I moved to Budapest to cover Eastern Europe and the Balkans. I spent most of 1992 and 1993 covering the war in Bosnia for the Post.

Diary From Belgrade

Slate
Five days in Serbia’s turbulent capital.
October 2000
Posted: Monday, Oct. 9, 2000, at 10:30 a.m. PT

It may not have been the polite thing to do, but I just gate-crashed a revolution. Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic was not in the mood to provide journalists with invitations, in the ... (Read more)

Milosevic May Not Relinquish Hold So Readily

San Jose Mercury News
October 1, 2000
The dictator is reeling. After mesmerizing and manipulating his country for more than a decade, Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic is suddenly a wounded tyrant who could be toppled by one more blow from an opposition that is, for once, united and strong.

The ... (Read more)

Deadly Competition

Brill’s Content
As demand for war footage to air on the network news heats up, more journalists are taking chances in dangerous situations — and for two of them, the risks proved fatal.
September 2000
Unlike the wild weeks that preceded it, May 24 seemed destined to be a slow ... (Read more)

The Horror

The Washington Post
Me Against My Brother: At War in Somalia, Sudan, and Rwanda. By Scott Peterson
August 27, 2000
At War in Somalia, Sudan, and Rwanda
By Scott Peterson
Routledge.
357 pp. $26

Reviewed by Peter Maass

Africa is an expression of vastness. It is a matter not just of size but of drama and ... (Read more)

Another Day in the Drop Zone

Outside Magazine
They fly into lands of hunger and madness, dispensing food while warlords dispense terror from the barrel of a gun. They trade safety and comfort for the sharp edge of altruism, predictable careers for the daily bread of death and disease. They’re relief workers ... (Read more)

Open Sesame

The New Republic
North Korea opens up.
June 12, 2000
In early 1995, Tony Namkung received a phone call from a diplomat at the North Korean mission to the United Nations. Would it be possible, the diplomat asked, to arrange for the magician David Copperfield to perform in Pyongyang? ... (Read more)

Is Prayer the Best Medicine?

Talk
At Duke University, researchers are testing a time-honored and potentially explosive premise: that prayer, even from the other side of the world, can actually help heal the sick.
June 2000
The woman is enmeshed in the wondrous gadgetry of modern medicine. A rotating X-ray machine swings ... (Read more)

Court Martial

The New Republic
An Islamic militia gains ground in Somalia.
March 13, 2000
Over the past decade Somalia has earned a reputation as the world capital of senseless violence. It scores almost as high in the poverty department. The coastal city of Merca, then, is that strangest of phenomena–a ... (Read more)

James Nachtwey’s Inferno

George
For more than a decade, photographer James Nachtwey has chronicled the war zones of the world–Rwanda, Bosnia and Chechnya among them. Now, a new book, Inferno, brings us his vision of hell on earth.
December 1999
When you drove into wartime Sarajevo along Sniper Alley, ... (Read more)

Serbia on the Couch

Talk
Tijana Mandic was the therapist of choice for Belgrade’s cultural elite. Then a war-scarred veteran came under her care, and the horror of his battles in the Balkans began to haunt her dreams.
December 1999
“Say out loud that you feel repelled looking into the eyes of a murderer,” ... (Read more)