The War Is Dead, Long Live the War by Ed Vulliamy — A British journalist's account of the Bosnian war, written two decades later as he returned to the scenes of the conflict. Much of what happened in Slavonia and the eastern Croatian borderlands is addressed through the lens of what came after.
Café Europa: Life After Communism by Slavenka Drakulić — A Croatian journalist and novelist explores what it meant to be Eastern European after 1989 and during the Yugoslav wars. Drakulić was born in Croatia and writes with uncomfortable honesty about the region, its self-deceptions, and its struggles.
How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed by Slavenka Drakulić — The same author's earlier book, a series of essays on everyday life under Yugoslav socialism. Specifically useful for understanding the social world that produced both the relative freedoms of Titoist Yugoslavia and the violence that followed its collapse.