In a timely, passionate survey of Balkan history since the early nineteenth century, Misha Glenny provides the essential background to recent terrible events in this war-torn area. No other book covers the entire region and offers such profound insights into the roots of Balkan violence, or explains so vividly the origins of modern Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia, Greece, Bulgaria, Romania and Albania. Many readers will welcome the author's insights into the final century of Ottoman rule, a complex and colourful period essential for understanding today's conflicts.
Glenny shows in this compulsively readable book how great-power interference in the region has been catastrophic for the people of the Balkans, and how so-called "ancient hatreds" and "tribal rivalries" have often been intensified by ignorant diplomats in far-away capitals, creating states, allocating populations and redrawing borders - with deadly results.
