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nikkib5's review against another edition
2.5
The story was very interesting. The writing made it hard to get into the book. Might have been closer to 3 or 4 stars otherwise. Definitely a book that needed some more help with writing and editing.
etbmw's review against another edition
2.0
I want to emphasize that my two-star review has to do with my enjoyment of the book and is not a reflection upon the amount of work the author did in order to write it, which was obviously substantial. My problem with the story was that it was not a story--it was a narrative that was very well researched but, in my opinion, not at all compelling.
theellabelle's review against another edition
4.0
I read this after reading Sheri Fink's more recent Five Days at Memorial and much like that work, War Hospital delves into some very difficult questions. War Hospital is set during the long siege of Srebenica in Bosnia and is centered around the doctors who practice medicine in heart-wrenching conditions inside the hospital there, as well as on the International medical aid community who served in Srebenica alongside them. As the book hurtles towards the impending genocide and devastation of 1995, the reader feels the same sense of hopelessness and doom that those trapped inside the enclave do. Fink doesn't just bring alive those harrowing years and final desperate weeks, she also asks what the responsibility of the international community is during wartime and lays bare the problem of believing that humanitarian aid is a substitute for resolving crisis and preventing suffering in the first place, through diplomacy and if necessary even military force. A thought provoking and well researched work of narrative non-fiction.
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