26.10.2013
Three titles of Odbrana Media Centre Publishing Activities Presented
On the next to the last day of the Book Fair, three books were presented at the booth of Odbrana Media Centre - "1999 Air War over Serbia" by Dr Bojan Dimitrijevic and Major General Jovica Draganic, "Combat Jets" by Dragan Cvetkovic and "Pillars of the European Security in the 21st century – NATO and the European Union", by Mr Sava Savic.The book “1999 Air War over Serbia" represents chronicling gradually, factually rich and methodologically consistent work of a monographic type. Sufficient historical distance provided the authors with a position to have more objective vision of an atypical conflict with a strong technological disproportion between opponents, in terms of full combat environment of a militarily inferior side.
It was stated at the promotion that many of the authors explained this event in different ways, collecting different materials.
- What we, as authors, wanted with this book is, above all, to observe the causes and events preceding the year 1999, starting as early as from the dissolution of SFR Yugoslavia. We paid attention to the experiences that NATO forces had gained over these years and implemented in 1999. The book follows the implementation of the NATO aggression, and we paid attention to the literature that testified about it later. With everything that our defence forces undertook we obtained, we believe, valuable evidence of the war in 1999 the air war against Serbia – General Jovica Draganic said, speaking about the book.
Dr Bojan Dimitrije
vic pointed out that this book was a challenge for historians, because the temporal distance from the event addressed is still small.- We wished to make a shift from the earlier literature on this topic and to offer an overall analysis of the war in 1999 paying attention to those sources that were neglected by other authors. As a historian, I used to collect data related to that war, and General Draganic contributed with his firsthand military experience. The main problem at writing it was of methodological nature and related to how to call this conflict. The name which was familiar in our country was aggression, while foreign media and the armed forces refer to it as operation, and we opted for the most conventional solution, the term "war" – Dimitrijevic said expressing the hope that with General Draganic, he succeeded as the author to properly depict the layered and complex structure of the war in 1999, and all that preceded it.
Book "Combat Jets" by Dragan Cvetkovic is intended for a wide circle of people interested in aircraft, especially combat jets, and those whose profession it is or lovers of this type of aircraft. An effort was made to present the matter in as popular way as possible in order to make it available to readers with less prior knowledge in this field. A total of 203 combat jets are described, and they are sorted by countries that are their manufacturers.
At the promotion the author pointed out that his book is a work of an eternal lover of aviation, and as such it is intended to those who cherish the same love.
- The book covered a broad historical combination from the field of jet planes, and it gives a chronological development of this type of aircraft, from the German ones from the Second World War to the most recent ones. Nearly six hundred photographs and detailed explanations for more than a hundred aircraft makes this work unique, and therefore I can be immodest to say that there is no another such book – Cvetkovic stressed, adding that the gathering of the materials worked for years with the wish that her love of airplanes and aviation is transferred to the next generation.Those present at the promotion were also addressed by the author of the book entitled "Pillars of the European Security in the 21st century – NATO and the European Union", Mr Sava Savic, thanks to the publisher Odbrana Media Centre and everyone who helped in the work of the book with the main goal of, as he said, the overall contribution to the understanding of contemporary European security architecture in terms of organization, capabilities, place, role and influence of NATO and the EU.
- The main motive for the publication of such a book is the lack of a unified literature on security issues and the basics of the European Union and NATO. It is necessary to understand the wider context of the security community as a new security culture and access to national, regional and global security, and my intention was to contribute with my book in this regard – Savic said.
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