The Sit Room

In the Theater of War and Peace

By: David Scheffer

Narrated by: Joe Barrett

Length: 12 hrs and 14 mins

Publisher's summary

The Sit Room brings you inside the secretive Situation Room of the White House, the most important deliberative room in the world, during the early 1990s when the author was one of the policymakers who framed the Clinton Administration's policy toward the bloody Balkans War. Drawing upon newly declassified documents and his own notes, David Scheffer, who later became America's first Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues, weaves the true story of how policy options were debated in the Sit Room among the highest national security officials. The road to a final peace deal in late 1995 came at the high price of the murderous siege of Sarajevo and ethnic cleansing of mostly Bosnian Muslims from their homes and towns, including the genocide of Srebrenica's men and teenage boys.

The Sit Room reveals the behind-the-scenes story about how American policy evolved - often futilely - to try to stop an intractable war and its shocking atrocities. Main actors in the Sit Room include: the assertive Ambassador to the United Nations, Madeleine Albright; the State Department's ace negotiator, Richard Holbrooke; the cerebral National Security Adviser, Tony Lake; the immigrant Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, John Shalikashvili; the bulldog Deputy National Security Adviser, Sandy Berger; and White House moralist, David Gergen.

©2018 Oxford University Press (P)2018 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books

Facinating

I found this to be a fascinating book. I liked the detailed information but some readers may find it boring. David Scheffer was the former American Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes and is now a law professor at Northwestern University.

The book is well written and meticulously researched. The author provides an insider’s detailed account of a three-year period of meetings in The White House Situation Room as policy makers dealt with the 1990 Balkans War. One of the key people was Madeleine Albright. She went from National Security Advisor to Ambassador to the United Nations to Secretary of State. The author was also one of the key people in the room and he provides a useful look at the policy-making process. Scheffer drew from his own notes and newly declassified documents to write the book. Until reading this book I was unaware that Albright played such a key role in the Balkans War in the 1990.

The book is twelve hours and fourteen minutes. Joe Barrett does an excellent job narrating the book. Barrett is an actor and voice artist. He has won the prestigious Audie Award as well as numerous Earphone Awards.