Since the author actually studied under one of the twentieth century's great historians, Fernand Braudel, I really had high expectations of this book. Most of them were not met. Stoianovich attempts to present a "total history" of the Balkans, which means it is not restricted to any historical period, nor to any specific field of study, encompassing consideration of the economy, society, geography, biological/environmental factors, etc. for the region as a whole. The author should be commended for such an ambitious undertaking, and his wide knowledge of the relevant primary and secondary sources is quite impressive. However, the book requires quite a bit of prior knowledge on the Balkans, so it cannot be used as an introduction to the region and its history. It seems as though Stoianovich's narrower field of interest is the Balkans under Ottoman rule, as it is those parts of the text which deal with that period that provide the most coherent analysis and receive the most thoughtful consideration. Also, the entire book has a rather disjointed character, as the author often cites dizzying quantities of information on e.g. linguistic morphology or whether patterns from Neolithic times to the present without tying the threads together clearly, thus leaving the reader feeling more confused rather than informed. Nationalism, as an overriding socio-political force in the Balkans for much of the last two centuries, is dealt with in an unsatisfactory manner: Stoianovich never quite explains it in the context of the region's overall, long-term development. Although he indirectly cites Ernest Gellner's theory of nationalism as a by-product of modernization and industrialization, he fails to explain why nationalism emerged among many Balkan peoples in a decidedly pre-industrial stage of their development. Another failing is the author's rather obvious pro-Serb bias: the preponderance of examples he uses involve Serbia or the Serbs, and he tries to give various Serbian politicians, scholars, philosophers, etc. a wider significance than they actually merit. In his discussion of Yugoslavia's collapse and the ensuing wars in the early 1990s, this line of thought leads to a rather sad and misguided exercise in trying to assign a kind of value-based "national character" to the Serbs and Croats (suffice it to say, the Serbs are imbued with positive traits while the Croats come out as rather treacherous). For me this aspect rather sullies the entire book, which is unfortunate, since his concluding chapter contains many valid observations and warnings on the nature of global capitalism and its consequences for the natural environment. While "Balkan Worlds" has many commendable aspects, as a whole the book is disappointing and largely fails as a total history of the Balkans.

In his preface, the author is very forthright about his book's failings and shortcomings. Basically, he tries to point out that "The Fragmentation of Yugoslavia" has a specific focus, i.e. the development and role of national ideologies in the country's break-up, rather than providing a comprehensive account of the myriad political, social, cultural, economic and other factors involved. This might have been a really good book if he had stuck to this thesis. Instead, however, he goes way off focus, summarizing not only the history of the national ideologies, but the history of the country in general. For the pre-1990 period, he relies heavily on much more detailed and informative books by other experts (notably Dennison Rusinow, Paul Shoup and Harold Lydall among others). When dealing with the post-1990 period, the author often goes into excessive detail in recounting various political/diplomatic negotiations, initiatives, etc. and wartime events, without really tying this in to his main topic (national ideologies). The author's discussion always seem rather brief and summarized - as though he's in a hurry to get to the next important subject - although given his central thesis, some more depth would seem necessary and rather welcome. The text is also rather dry, lacking even the occasional sharp observation or enlightening anecdote to improve the narrative. In his conclusion, Pavkovic states that a possible solution to the Yugoslav conflicts could be the holding of plebiscites among minority populations (whether displaced or not) as a first step in a meaningful reconciliation process. While I appreciate the sentiment, this idea is rather utopian given past events, and the author does not explain how this could be carried out in practice. All in all, "Fragmentation of Yugoslavia" is a very unoriginal and disappointing book, and despite the author's scholarly credentials, it is just another mediocre addition to the vast body of "Yugoslav tragedy" literature.

The common dictum in fiction writing is "show, don't tell." That is, to keep your reader interested, it is much more involving to "show" the scene, idea, instance, or action, than to "tell." Interestingly, I think that this dictum goes beyond fiction. I've never been much of a history buff. Part of this is because of how they teach it in our public schools--dry facts and actions, later to be regurgitated on multiple-choice tests. But history can be interesting, when it's shown rather than told. What is a story--hi-story? --but a history of what happened, is happening, or will happen? Or, to illustrate the point, remember a move from the 80s called "Teachers," starring Nick Nolte? Also appear was that crazy guy from "Soap" (Richard Mulligan?) as an escaped loony who "takes over" for the history professor. Every time you see him, he's in a new costume: Caesar, Napeleon, George Washington. He's creating dioramas in his classroom. Now, there's something to remember history through!

What does this have to do with Marcos Tanner's travelogue through Eastern Europe? I'm sure you've already guessed it. Tanner has forgotten, if he ever knew it (he's a journalist; the dictum in journalism is the pyramid structure, where the most important facts are told first, the next most important next, ad infinitum), that he needs to show us things. It's not that he doesn't do so entirely. The memories I have from this book consist of several cases of showing. But he intersperses dry-fact history among those scenes, effectively killing any momentum that he could have had. In fiction we have another term for this injection of background, history or full descriptino in the text; we call it "information dumping." It's not that Tanner doesn't know of what he speaks, but he overloads the book (at least fifty percent) with extraneous background in sections, rather than working it in with his travels.

A disappointing collection, with only one interesting paper: an essay by Francine Friedman and Robin Remington on the changes of strategy of the Bosniak political leadership during the war. Other contributions include a routine survey of EU policy on the war (by K. Messas), and a paper on Milosevic's policies and the Western response, by Obrad Kesic, which sneers at those Western 'moralists' who placed the primary blame for the war on Milosevic

I did not like the book. It is poorly written and even more poorly proofread. For a person knowing something about the area, it might be painful to read numerous inaccuracies and misrepresentations of the facts. It is a real shame that there are a couple of really good articles (e.g., Yemelyanova or Donskis) mixed together with nationalistic pieces like that of Stepanenko/Sorokopud or pseudo-scholar gibberish like that of Chuprov/Zubok. The editors' lack of understanding of the subject is betrayed by phrases like "Russia's" (not "Soviet," as it should be) "successor states", Ukraine's "rapid economic reform" and by nonsensical assertions about the "stable economic and political situation" in Russia in 1998. Steve Carter apparently does not know that George Vernadsky could borrow the ideas of noosphere from his father Vladimir Vernadsky, who actually authored the term, rather than from Teilhard de Chardin who in his own turn borrowed it from Vernadsky. A condescending and often arrogant attitude of the authors toward what they call the Russian question is unfortunately becoming a rather typical sign of British scholarship on Russia and Eastern Europe. Were it offset by a brilliant scholarship, we might have excused it. A truly sad part of the story is that this kind of an attitude is often exhibited in direct proportion to the degree of one's own personal ignorance in the matters that are supposedly made a subject of expert analysis. Too bad Gellner is no longer around.

if im the first person to review this book .. im sure its quite bad

Rarely have I read such a horrible book. The author's knowlegde of the Baltic States is mediocre at best and therefore the book is filled with errors, inaccuracies, biases and blantant displays of ignorance. In addition, even as the book came out a few years ago, it was already dated and its data did not reflect the economic, political or social reality of the Baltic States. The author's analysis of the three countries is quite unbalanced, dedicating too much coverage to Estonia, just enough to Lithuania and almost forgetting Latvia in the process. I do not recommend this book to anyone.