This account of the fall of Srebrenica makes you wonder if there is any point having the United Nations.
The message in A Safe Area - Srebrenica: Europe's Worst Massacre Since the Second World War is so forcefully conveyed that at times it detracts from what should take precedence: the atrocities that took place in this Bosnian town.
Historians have argued that the Balkans will always be the Balkans: a melting pot of different peoples and cultures at the crossroads of Europe that is inherently unstable and which has a natural predisposition to war.
But what is staggering is how paralysingly ineffective the UN was as the enclave was about to fall, and how it continued to be so as Srebrenica capitulated to the advancing Serb army.
Clinton dithered, Major hesitated and Chirac wavered. And in their wake, thousands of people - perhaps 7,000 in all, according to semi-official estimates - died.
Meanwhile, the Dutch peacekeepers' appeals for NATO airstrikes against the invading Serbs were apparently ignored. Of course, there is a fine dividing line between peacekeeper and war-promoter, but one cannot help but feel Dad's Army might have fared better in the former Yugoslavia.