This book shows exactly how albania was and how it is. It gives all these iformation,from albania's culture to it's economy. I myself am from albania and still could not explain it as good as David K. Wright does. I have all these thougts and memories on my mind about some of Albania's dictators,heroes,and how they were but no other book or internet cite comes as close to those thoughts as this book does. I think it's really good.

This is a masterfully written and extensively researched book that fills an important gap in the historical scholarship on the twentieth century southeastern Europe. The author carefully examines the political role and influence of religion and argues that none of the main ethnic religions, the Serbian Orthodox, the Roman Catholic "Church of the Croat People," and Yugoslav Islamic community, ever endorsed the idea of multiconfessional and multiethnic Yugoslav state. Powerful ethnoclericalism prevented full legitimization of both the inter-war Yugoslav monarchy and of the post-war socialist Yugoslavia. The author correctly argues that politically active clergy fused religious intolerance with nationalistic animosity to create "ethnic churches" in form and nationalistic parties in substance. The clergy departed from their original purpose and became hypernationalistic, antiliberal, and antisecular leaders who lacked the accountability of their secular counterparts.
I commend it highly.

Written by two well-known historians of the Baltic/ Scandinavian region, this book breaks ground in the way it presents the history of the two major seas of Northern Europe: we get away from a "names-dates-events" approach to a more holistic view of the term "history" with repsect to the Baltic and North Seas. It is not only people and institutions who figure in this book, but the seas themselves, beginning from their formation. The book examines such questions as how the presence of these seas influenced life around them, ranging from trade and the technology of sailing to the use of the shoreline for livelihood and recreation.

Parts of this book 'feel' very visual in nature, though there are rather few (but well chosen) illustrations. Indeed, one could envision a six-part television series based on this book -- the sort of thing the BBC or Discovery or History Channel do well.

Too bad about the price -- bring out a paperback edition!

Wow, Roger Williams has edited a wonderful book! This travel guide is much more than a basic Fodor's or Mobil type guide. It is full of beautiful full-color photographs-- I would say a couple hundred... In fact every page has at least one photo. "Baltic States" is printed on high quality paper and reads much like a great pictorial magazine.

This is not to say it is a light-weight when it comes to material. There is substantial history and background included. It's enough to satisfy your interest, but not so much that it turns into an overbearing text book.

Equal treatment is given to all three Baltic states: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. It guides you though the must see attractions as well as historical spots. As I read it, I felt as though I had a person walking side by side through the various sights.

Another thing I love is their "Yellow Pages" format for the nitty gritty travel details at the back of the book. You'll find all the basics you need to know that all the other good travel guides would offer. Obviously they do this to make it easier to produce new editions, as well as locating all the key facts with an easy to use format.

This book receives my highest recommendation for an incredible travel guide and addition to your home library.

After the first six years of collecting data from descendents of Pomeranian immigrants, Myron Gruenwald identified the patterns of where they came from and where they settled. He also tries to identify characteristics possesed by these immigrants. He gathers information from 1164 families and gives detailed accounts of the path they took to get to America. Most of the immigrants during this period settled in Wisconsin and later in other midwest states.

A lavishly illustrated book, depicting the beauty the city of St. Petersburg before its bombardment by the Germans in WWII. Depicting everyday life as well as the monumental architecture of this historic city, with a brief history of this city of Peter the Great. The reader is also told which buildings survived destruction and which didn't. A must for any lovers of Russian history under the last Tsar.

John D. Bell provides perhaps the best account of the history of the Bulgarian Communist Party available in English. Together with Richard Crampton's history of Bulgaria, it is also the best scholarly source of more general Bulgarian history in the 20th century. A must for anyone studying Bulgaria. The book uses interviews of dissidents who fled Bulgaria during the years of communist domination to supplement available archival sources. The result is a magnificently documented narrative that brings to light some controversial and unclear episodes in the history of Bulgarian communism. The book demonstrates, for example, that Zhivkov's power was not unchallenged and that internal dissent, even if it came from the Party or the armed forces, existed even here, in the country widely considered to have been the closest Soviet ally and follower. The book also demonstrates the reciprocity of alliance politics within the Soviet bloc. Challenging the existing convention, John Bell demonstrates that relations within the Warsaw pact were not unidirectional. The Soviet Union responded to various interests of the Bulgarian leadership and often helped their advancement. In addition, the book is thoroughly readable and, provides impartial insight into the almost century-old history of the Bulgarian labor movement and its political organizations.

Paul Stephenson reached several conclusions that are really revolutionary for the study of the Byzantine administration in the Balkan provinces. The increasing interest for the Balkan history (not only for the modern times) denotes the need to understand the roots of the present conflicts. Stephenson's book explains how and why the disintegration of the Byzantine administration and the emergence of the ethnic states in the Balkans were possible. His main idea is that "Byzantine authority was almost always exercised through existing local power structures". Can we consider these surviving local structures to be a cause of the future Balkan separatism, even if they were not always the expression of "national" solidarities ? We think so, because also the Ottoman administration preserved and used in its interest the power of some Albanian, Serbian and Bosniac local potentates, after their conversion to Islam and even before. Stephenson has payed a special attention to the significance of the frontier as an ideological limit between the civilized world and the barbarians. He also introduces a new concept: the internal frontiers of the territories mastered by the local authochtonous rulers by whom the Byzantine administration was exerted. The book brings valuable arguments for the new interpretation of the 11th century supported by P. Lemerle and more recently by M. Angold against Ostrogorsky's old viewpoint. Stephenson shows that the shift to 'civilian' government was not a decline, because "the Byzantine economy was growing rapidly" and that the defence policy based on warfare was replaced with a more adecquate policy based on trade and gifts for the barbarians ("traiding, not raiding"). He considers that Basil II left a poisoned legacy: a too large and expensive army, and that his 'civilian' successors tried to transform the general strategy after the hard Pecheneg inroads of 1036, when became obvious that a classical limes is not useful. Unlike many works of Byzantine political history, this book gives much attention to the rich archaeological and numismatic evidence, carefully used in order to supply the scarcity of the literary sources. Some points are disputable or even wrong, but, generally speaking, the use of archaeology led him to important conclusions I consider that the most important Stephenson's contributions concern the history of the Paradunavon province (in northern Bulgaria and Dobrudja) and the Byzantine-Hungarian relations in the 12th century. Other subjects dealt in are: the Byzantine conquest of Bulgaria, the restoration of this state after the rebellion led by the Vlach rulers Peter and Asan in the form of a Romanian-Bulgarian state, the small Slavic principalities in the Serbian lands. Albeit a high-scientific work, this book can easily be read by any people interested in the medieval history. We can be sure that this book will be considered a major contribution to the history of the South-Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages.

Dr. Alexandru Madgearu

The American city, too, trembles on its foundations. The "polis" of poetry shakes in the winds of Post-"Post". Answers are coming from across the oceans--from Agha Shahid Ali, who writes de-unified poems which cohere through form and technique, from Bei Dao, from American poets like Fanny Howe, Michael Palmer, Jean Valentine, and Jorie Graham who flirt with, tease, and engage the intersection (or interstice?) where once disparate poetics (formalism, new formalism, language, feminist, elliptical, post-, etc) are meeting.

Not only meeting but dancing.

Now another collection comes into English (courtesy of H.L. Hix). Alisanka's (mostly) small poems hinge line by line, word by word. At no moment will you know where you are. There are no red arrows and no maps. This is you in the labyrinth of language. This is you fabulously lost.

These days when I ask unnecessary questions like "why this?" or "how to do it?" or "what next?" I have another set of answers to turn to.

These poems are beyond "metaphysical"--they are both immediately "physical" and immediately "meta" at once. Consider it another lexicography--better than that, consider it one of the solution pages, or a prescription to keep filling--

Dances of the Obscure is actually not a collection of poems, but a one poem with many parts. Saarikoski writes intensively, subjectively but gives room also to the antique poets, which he translated into Finnish, and to the discussions of the Christianity and Communism. The old Finnish folklore is mixed with European cultural heritage.