Barbara Demick on the best books on Bosnia Remember Bosnia? The war that introduced the term "ethnic cleansing" to the lexicon of war crimes. The struggle that Susan Sontag called as emblematic of our times as the Spanish Civil War. For all the passion Bosnia generated in the early Nineties, its tragedies were quickly overshadowed by the horrors of Rwanda, Iraq and Afghanistan, and largely slipped off the front page. Now is a good time to reflect on Bosnia, as this month marks the 20th anniversary of the outbreak of war. Misha Glenny's The Fall of Yugoslavia (1992), one of the first books I read before heading out to Bosnia to cover the war is, I am happy to report, still in print and has been updated. The Death of Yugoslavia (1995), based on a BBC series of the same name, provides a blow-by-blow account that is like watching a car crash in slow motion. Younger readers will be moved by Zlata's Diary (1994), written by Sarajevo's equivalent of Anne Frank. Samantha Power's A Problem from Hell (2002) opens with a group of schoolgirls hit by a mortar shell while skipping, and from there tackles the larger questions about the world's responsibility to prevent genocide. Power is now an adviser to President Barack Obama and her moral outrage contributed to American resolve to intervene in Libya. If you are not convinced that Bosnia still matters, try the newest book on my list, Can Intervention Work? Rory Stewart and Gerald Knaus examine the failure of Afghanistan and the (relative) success of Bosnia and what they teach us for the future.