Customer Reviews (1)

Incomplete, biased, disappointing
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. ... Read more

Product Description
The Balkan Name in History is a customized book offering a unique blend of fascinating facts, statistics and commentary about the Balkan name.The book is just one of an entire series of family name books in the Our Name in History collection.Each book in the collection is printed on demand and is compiled from hundreds of millions of records from the world's largest online resource of family history, Ancestry.com.This particular book follows the Balkan family name through history and makes the perfect gift for your family members and anyone interested in the Balkan name. In the book you'll find out about where people with the Balkan last name originated. You may discover the countries and ports they left behind, the ships they sailed and more. You'll get a better idea of where people sharing the Balkan name settled and where they may reside today in the United States, Canada, England and other countries.You'll get all this information and much more in your Balkan family name book. If your last name is not Balkan, then check out our collection of nearly 300,000 family name books to find other available names in the series. ... Read more

Book Description
This digital document is an article from Policy Review, published by Thomson Gale on February 1, 2007. The length of the article is 4754 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: The end of Balkan history.(Serbia )
Author: Fatos Tarifa
Publication: Policy Review (Magazine/Journal)
Date: February 1, 2007
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Issue: 141Page: 59(11)

Distributed by Thomson Gale ... Read more

Book Description
The Roma presence in the European part of the Ottoman Empire in the Balkans is centuries old and it is not by accident that this region has often been called the second motherland of the Gypsies. This is the first book to be published on the history, ethnography, social structure and culture of the Gypsies in the Ottoman Empire. It is based on archival sources, mainly detailed tax registers, special laws, guild registers and court documents. Notes on Gypsies in books by foreign travelers are also included. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Birds eye view.Level of detail inconsistent.
Good, if brief, summary of Balkan campaign. Reviews political, logistical, and force aspects of the campaigns, but left me wanting to know more of somethings but less of others.For example, he lists a detailedorder of battle for the German forces arranged against Yugoslavia, butleaves you to find out on your own what the composition of a German TankCorps would be, when a simple table would provide lots of clarity. Forthe Yugoslavia campaign, the bulk of the writing involves preparations, andthe combat narrative is a bare skeleton.The Greek campaign is describedin somewhat more detail and leaves the reader with a better understanding.The photos might be interesting if they were not too fuzzy to interpret. The maps are almost illegible and therefore unhelpful. ... Read more

Book Description
Volume III of The Cambridge Ancient History was first published in 1925 in one volume. The new edition has expanded to such an extent, owing to the immense amount of new information now available, that it has had to be divided into three parts. Volume III Part 1 opens with a survey of the Balkans north of Greece in the Prehistoric period. This is the first time such a survey has been published of this area which besides its intrinsic interest is important for its influence on the cultures of the Aegean and Anatolia. The rest of the book is devoted to the tenth to the eigth centuries B. C. In Greece and the Aegean the main theme is the gradual regeneration from the Dark Age and the emergence of a society in which can be seen the beginnings of the city-state. During the same period in Western Asia and the Middle East the Kingdoms of Assyria and Babylonia rise to power, the Urartians appear, and in Palestine the kingdoms of Israel and Judah flourish. In Egypt the country's fortunes revive briefly under Shoshenq I. The final chapter in this part deals with the languages of Greece and the Balkans and with the invention and spread of alphabetic writing. ... Read more

Book Description
The bloody break-up of the former Yugoslavia and the region's wider struggles with a post-Communist transition suggest continuing Balkan burdens for the peoples and states of Southeastern Europe. Ethnic conflict, disputed borders, forced migration and foreign intervention had already scarred the countries from Romania south to Greece during the decades surrounding the two world wars. John Lampe disputes this pejoratively Balkan background. He traces the region's traumatic twentieth century through wars and postwar transitions that adopted or confronted European ideologies, institutions and interventions. ... Read more