Bosnia's Million Bones

Jennings, Christian. Bosnia's Million Bones: Solving the World's Greatest Forensic Puzzle. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.

Journalist Christian Jennings has documented the Yugoslav War from 1991-1995 and the acts of genocide committed by Serbian leaders and their troops toward the conclusion of that war. They attempted to hide the bodies in mass graves, often burying individuals in more than one. A group of forensic scientists came up with a method using DNA testing to identify the bodies and get them back to their families for proper burial. They had a high degree of success which has since been used in disasters and other mass grave situations throughout the world, especially by the International Commission on Missing Persons which was established, in part, as a result of this Bosnian genocide. It's a very interesting story of how DNA is being used for identification on a wide-scale basis. This review is based on an advance reader's edition provided by the publisher through LibraryThing's Early Reviewer program with the expectation that a review would be written.