Rating: 
Summary: A book with grave consequences
Review: If it was written about a more innocent part of the world, this book probably would have remained simply a journalist travelogue with its vivid imagery and its stereotypes. As it appeared at a crucial junction in Western policy towards the Balkan during the Bosnian war, it effect has been desasterous. Bill Clinton is known to have read the book and decided against US involvement in Bosnia on the basis of this read before the Holbrooke initative. It contains unstained claims about 'ancient ethnic hatereds' in the region and suggestion even that fascism is basically a Balkan invention, conviniently forgetting that the concepts over which much blood was shed in the Balkans were fundamentally Western concepts, such as the nation state.
It's negative impact continues to this day, where it appears on the reading lists provided by some US authorities for their employees working in the region.
The book is worth reading only if one is trying to understand Western misconception of the region, preferably with combination with Maria Todorova's Imagining the Balkans which challenges exactely those stereotypes.
Rating:
Summary: Weak....
Review: The most insightful thing Kaplan says in this book is in the new Forward, where he says that it is frightening, if true, that the President based decisions about U.S. policy in the Balkans on information from this book. If this were nothing but a travel book, it would be simply like reading Paul Theroux without the writing ability. The pretensions of writing history and policy are truly distressing: Kaplan rehashes versions of history from whomever he encounters without the slightest attempt at balance or even context. He appears fully ignorant of the new look many historians are taking at the true effect of Turkish rule in the Balkans, preferring rehashing of gory atrocity stories to real comparisons of conditions under the Turks, the Hapsburgs, or previous bloody feudal rulers or oligarchies. His comments about Romania, while visually interesting, are stunning in their shallowness. This is probably because it appears that he was unable to get interviews with anyone very interesting. I do wonder about Kaplan's general knowledge as well as the efficacy of his editors: his constant references to crops or brandy from plums and prunes make it clear that throughout his travels he never figured out that they are the same fruit. And his comments about Papandreau's stewardess wife possibly replacing him as Prime Minster "following in the footsteps of Eva Person" betray a startling lack of not just history but even popular culture...anyone who's even seen the musical knows that Eva didn't replace her husband....This is really a deeply worthless book, save yourself the time and the money...
Rating:
Summary: Kaplan¿s Ghosts
Review: I picked up this book because it has received good reviews. All I wanted was to get an objective and balanced third party opinion about situation on the Balkans. Well, the experience was exactly the opposite. I rarely hate books, but tell you the truth this was the one... I started hating the book from the second page where a nice panegyric to Mr. Kaplan is placed below his own smirking portrait. Apparently he was the first American author, I read, warning the world about upcoming Balkan catastrophe. Yeah, right... I continued to hate it through the foreword where Mr. Kaplan pointed out to me that he was and still is a supporter of the USA sending combat troops to the former Yugoslavia to pacify the region. Here I was presented with a military solution to the Balkan problems on the page two of the Foreword... This is even before I heard anything whatsoever about what was wrong with the Balkans. I wanted to throw the book through the window many times since I soon realized that Mr. Kaplan wasn't objective and the balanced picture was not his goal. He obviously not only had a love affair with himself but also had an axe to grind. Boy, was I right! Lacking history training, he constantly repeats old Western stereotypes. He is using the data taken from the dubious sources. Sometimes it feels like a daily tabloid type of read. This helps to create caricatures, not balances portraits of peoples and nations. He knows some facts, but his knowledge is superficial and mostly sensation-oriented. Usually the less is the knowledge the higher is moral ground taken by the critic. Mr. Kaplan delivers his opinions from the high moral ground. No one spared, but the groups outside of the "Big Three" of the American religions - Protestantism, Catholicism and Judaism are suffering the most form the patronizing attitude of the author. Particularly scornful he is towards Muslim Turks and Orthodox Romanians and Serbs. There is no drama. Mr. Kaplan doesn't suffer with his characters and he doesn't change with them. He finishes the book with the same tone and attitude as he starts it. Intellectualism and sarcasm without much compassion - this is a bottom line of this book. The one thing is certain - you will learn some curios (mostly morbid) facts about the past of the Balkan nations. However, I doubt it will be a good guide for understanding the past or predicting the future of this troubled region. After all, the book is only a travelogue, which tells us more about Mr. Kaplan's state of mind rather than the nations he describes. But, hey, lets be fair to poor author, at least the author kept some humility if his picture is only on the second page of the book. He could have insisted to put it on the front cover like some other self-loving types. In short, don't waist your time, unless you enjoy sensation of pile of dirt thrown on your head from above.
Rating:
Summary: I'd give it a 0 if I could
Review: This book is absolute trash. Its sources are ridiculous and it was written by one with dubious credentials for providing an analysis of the Balkan region, one of the most complex, if not the most complex region in the world. He cites Stoker as a source on Romanian history, completely ridiculous; Stoker composed a ficticious story in the anti-Eastern Victorian sentiment of his time. He has not done enough research based on primary sources and has little knowledge of any Balkan country except perhaps Greece. Even so, his "analysis" is patently biased, particularly against Orthodoxy. He is one who's thesis is that all the Balkan problems can be traced to "ancient ethnic hatreds", a pure lie. In some cases, the hatreds are ancient, but have not led to much bloodshed. For instance, the hatred between Bulgarian and Serb is about a thousand years old and can be traced to the incessant warfare between the two medieval empires and later independent states over the region of Macedonia. The hatred between Serb and Croat, however is much more recent. To understand why the Serbs rebelled in the recent war against the Croats and Moslems, we needn't go back to "ancient history", just 50 years back. The Croat Ustashi, Moslem SS Hadzar, and Albanian SS Skenderbey were responsible for the death of 1 million Serbs in concentration camps and massacres in Europe's third largest genocide. As Croatia tore away and reinstituted the trappings of the NDH, such as the crest, the monetary unit, reburying of the Ustashi in the Jasenovac area, Tudjman's statement "I am proud that my wife is neither a Serb nor a Jew", regular threatening radio messages, and several massacres committed by Croats in Slavonia provoked the Croatian war of the 1990's. The Serbian fears could be traced to WWII, certainly not ancient history. His analyses of Albania, Macedonia, and Bulgaria are weak. He does not delve into the genocide the Balkan state Turkey perpetrated against the Armenians, etc. In short, this book's thesis is a complete failure. Certainly some of today's Balkan conflicts can be attributed to ancient history, but by far the most is a result of the history of this century.
Rating:
Summary: How stereotyping becomes norm for US foreign policy.
Review: I found the book easy to read and Kaplan is obviously extremely talented at writing narratives. But the more I indulged in the book, the more I became intrigued by some of the things he concluded on the Balkans. I found his little bursts of history analysis to be very unhelpful to the reader who has a greater understanding of the region than a relatively basic knowledge. The book is an informative source for the reader who is totally unfamiliar with the Balkans and could be used as an introduction to the history of a place that was closed to the outside world for so many decades. The first part of the book focuses on Yugoslavia, a country I know very little about. Therefore, I found this part to be useful to me. But the second part, about Romania, absolutely outraged me. I found his comments and conclusions on Romania to be extremely racist and biased and I observed that Kaplan uses a few sources as generalities for the whole country. He is not interested on checking his sources or checking the other side of the story. The moment I realized how inaccurate many of the facts used in this book is the moment I read Romanian phrases and names of Romanian regions used by Kaplan to suggest he really knows what he is talking about. Most of these phrases and names are misspelled and grammatically incorrect. For instance, the word securitatae should be securitate, Nicholae should be Nicolae, voivods should be voievozi, cuibs should be cuiburi, Cernovoda should be Cernavoda, Ioanna should be Ioana, multsumesc is multumesc, Opinia Studeneasca should be Opinia Studenteasca, Sucevitsa is Sucevita, catatea is cetatea, the expression tyrannul a fugit Bucuresti should be tiranul a fugit din Bucuresti, and I could go on and on. A person who is not Romanian will immediately think Kaplan's story is credible because he uses so many Romanian words. But Romanians know that his words are incorrect and therefore, his credibility to a Romanian is greatly diminished. The least he could have done was to check his spelling before publishing this book. And this is just one of the minor things that diminishes his credibility. The fact that he constantly refers to books written in the 1910's about the region and he uses them as sources should tell the reader that this book is outdated and not very well sourced. And how can he use Bram Stoker's Dracula as a source on Transylvania? Stoker has never been to Transylvania and his book was purely fiction and meant to be intriguing and mysterious. The fact the Kaplan uses Stoker's book as a main source on Transylvania should also tell the reader about the seriousness of this book that, sadly formulated American foreign policy. The only conclusion I come to is that there are lots of ignorant people out there who take the first source as genuine fact, and lets it influence the course of relationships among countries. I find that extremely misleading and depressing. His book is biased because he is Jewish, so he portrays the Jews as great saints while the Romanians are tyrants and unworthy of anyone's attention. I cannot believe he is so ignorant as to refer to this beautiful country as he does in the following paragraph: "Prostitution, black marketeering , and informing on one's neighbors and friends all had such a deep-rooted tradition in Romania that there was a charming naturalness and innocence about it." How can he dare say such biased and cruel things about a country he knows nothing about? How can he be so narrow-minded? He should have never left the West because he obviously is not prepared to look at the Balkan region through any other eyes than Western eyes that contain an abundance of stereotypes. In the case with Romania, he obviously read all his historical facts in books published by Hungarians who have hated Romanians for a very long time. On page 151, he writes something that strikes me as a lie. He says that Ceausescu forbade Hungarians from giving their children Hungarian names at baptism. This is totally false. I lived in Cluj, which he maintains that it was Hungarian before (another biased fact) and a lot of my neighbors and classmates were Hungarian and they all had Hungarian names such as Czobo, Zoltan, Eniko, Ildiko, and so on. I am not saying that all of his facts are misleading and untrue, but the majority are. The last part of his book deals with Bulgaria and Greece, two countries that he writes really well about just because he loves them. I know for a fact that Bulgaria is no different than Romania (since I visited Bulgaria annually for eleven years), and therefore, should not deserve the higher praise in the book. I can go on and on about the stereotypes, misleading conclusions, untrue facts, and biases. However, I will end my review by mentioning that I am really happy I read this book, even though I read it in frustration, because now I can talk intelligently about how the book is distorted. It is sad that such a book can formulate American foreign policy and is one of the few books available on the Balkans. People get the wrong idea about the region by reading this book. Therefore, I would not ever recommend it to anyone who does not know anything about the region, because it does not serve them right. It only reiterates the already existing stereotypes about the Balkans.
Rating: 
Summary: An overview of the region and politics
Review: Although I feel that this book is an "overview" of the Balkan region and the various political situations throughout the areas the author visits, in no way could I recommend this as some sort of "starter" book for someone unfamiliar with the areas and their histories. Kaplan seems to run from place to place with only time enough to give a snapshot idea of what one person or moment there is like, and a few things that were said in particular places and times. He skips over vast regions, too, instead prefering to concentrate for pages at a time on particular hotels or restaurants. The political commentaries are likewise rushed and overwhelming, with little to no explanation of the background surrounding them. They are like short little "case studies," and one has to wonder how much authority can be invested in them. And Kaplan's emotional judgements are sometimes overt, sometimes implicit, but all too often heavy-handed. And also out-of-date; one has to wonder how many of the opinions voiced by these "case study" examples still ring true today, 12 years later. Yet at the same time, with all that being said, I nonetheless found the book to be a compelling read. It has what Kaplan calls a "Dostoevsky"-style feel, and moreover, you might feel like a traveler compelled to look at a car accident; it is depressing, grim, dirty. It is not pleasant. And yet sometimes the people and the regions stand out with such startling clarity that the reader cannot help but feel intrigued.
Rating: 
Summary: Biased Tour de Force
Review: 'Balkan Ghosts' is an impressionistic tour de force of the Balkan. It doesn't come near Rebecca West's masterpiece 'Black Lamb and Gray Falcon' - but it is a travelogue in the same tradition. The author, who is acquainted with certain parts of the Balkan, crosses these tortured lands just prior to the Yugoslav wars of secession. His prognoses are accurate, his depiction of ancient ethnic enmities sweeping, his pessimism justified in hindsight. But too many important aspects are neglected or papered over. The responsibility of the West, the interplay of big powers, the ineptitude of international organizations, the forces of democracy and ethnic reconciliation in the region, religious co-existence and much more besides. Though one sided and biased, it is a must read - if only to understand what influenced the American administration of Bill Clinton in the formulation of its Balkan policies. Sam Vaknin, author of 'After the Rain - How the West Lost the East'.
Rating:
Summary: Nationalist compulsive repetitive disorders: English v. Yugo
Review: 17 Feb 2001 Near the start of last decade's Bosnian war of independence, I read "Black Lamb and Grey Falcon" by Dame Rebecca West (mentioned earlier), followed immediately by Mr. Kaplan's "Balkan Ghosts: a Journey through History," which retraces her steps where possible on a similar sojourn. I think the author makes clear his caveats in the Preface, that this is a personal pilgrimmage partially along a pre-traveled route while interviewing locals about their opinions or histories as they understand them, and not a judicial tally of who started what when where and why? Stories of what the locals say <think>. How Dame West managed two eve-of-WW2 sojourns through an increasingly more violent Yugoslavia and write such voluminous detail while traveling with a near-hysterical Serbian host is pathological. Even if she used shorthand. It would be funny if one didn't know WW2 was about to begin and nobody in the book is in a good situation except Mrs. West. I kept thinking, "these were real people; this really happened." Now, we have the opportunity to retrace some of those steps on the eve of fin-de-siecle destruction (like walking the Via Dolorosa in Old Jerusalem with modern crowds of 'believers' / 'infidels') with a similarly intrepid, opinionated author with anglophonic sensibilities with regard to public toilets and 'age-old ethnic hatreds.' Mr. Kaplan shouldn't be scolded for providing a House of Horrors on a Disney Balkanland tour to bring We the Masses up to speed on at least what popular opinion is in some areas about people and/or events in other areas and/or times. I purchased two detailed, relief-colorized Michelin autoroute road maps of ex-Yugoslavia and opened them end-to-end with opposite sides showing so I had a huge, double-size wall map of the former country's republics with lots of detail (back roads, mountain/ridge tracks). As I read "BL&GF" I used a red marker to trace the often obscure, but always traceable, route with red push-pins (pink for girls) to indicate Dame West's stopping points; and a blue marker and blue push-pins to trace Mr. Kaplan's route. (I later added a yellow highlighter and transparent push-pins to the map as the author of "Road to Kosovo"(I think) bribed Serbian border guards on his way across Montenegro and drove across a Kosovan 'steppe' just prior to the round-ups, killings & deportations of ethnic Albanians. Fortunately he left the province in time. All I can say is, "Hey, Dood! Surf's up! I'd have done it too if I could, and also written a book to pay for it." My copy sits proudly next to Misha Glenny et al. A good non-fiction reaching back to medieval kingdoms & heretics of a curious Bulgarian origin: "Bosnia - a Short History" by Noel Malcolm ; and best fiction: 1961 Nobel Prize for Literature winner: "The Bridge on the [River] Drina" by Ivo Andric'. The image of what the provincial Ottoman rulers made the local Roma (Gypsies) do to two Serb nationalists caught trying to blow up the bridge may never leave your mind. The three (3) books I've mentioned, _The Bridge on the Drina_, _Black Lamb and Grey Falcon_, and Mr. Kaplan's _Balkan Ghosts: a Journey through History_ are my favorite three of my almost two dozen books on Bosnia, Yugoslavia, the Balkans... in that order. Together in that sequence, they provide the reader with a visceral experience of some of the emotions that are bred into Balkan blood and bones.
Rating:
Summary: Kaplan's Orcs
Review: A number of reviewers of this book have complained of bias, and others have said things like this: "Everyone has bias. So what?" and "If he offended so many people he must have got it about right." Well, everyone has bias at the start, but you can deal with it well or badly. Kaplan is spotty. He lives in Greece and has a confessed pro-Greek bias, which no one can blame him for. He deals well with this bias in his chapters on Greece, which are some of the most interesting in the book, but whenever he mentions the Turks, all the virtues of his thought and writing disappear. For Kaplan, Turks are the same as Tolkien's orcs. Consider the following: he refers to "the long, dark night of [Turkish]servitude" (44)and "the living death of Ottoman Turkish rule" (38), while a Macedonian rising "collapsed under Turkish whips and rifle butts" (56). Turks are purely destructive: after setting out (fairly enough) the accomplishments of Byzantine art and architecture, he baldly writes "But the Turks smashed it all" (246). They are mysteriously bloodthirsty: pictures of Kemal Ataturk are gratuitously compared to "an Aryan Dracula" (283). Indeed, his character is elsewhere summed up as "ruthless and charismatic" (247). Turks are dirty, dark and ugly. There is a reference, for instance to "liver-hued suburbs of Istanbul and Ankara" (41), and this phrase serves to sum up all that is unpleasant about Prishtina. Any unpleasant characteristic of any people or place is measured against the heart of darkness that is for Kaplan (or was at the time of writing) the Turkish character. For instance, he writes that the Phanariot Greeks who ruled Romania "equalled the Turks in their ability to bleed the peasants" (91). Even their language, it seems, is ugly. Speaking of "Adrianople," he writes, "The town appears on international maps under the Turkish name of Edirne, a word that holds no charm for the ears of English-speakers" (285). Kaplan's Turks speak the Black Speech, live in squalor, and take a squealing delight in tormenting Christians. Tolkien would have felt at home. Well, I live in Istanbul, and my neighbours are not orcs. People are friendly, are helpful with my limitations in the rather beautiful language of Turkish, and so on. Discussions of history with Turks do sometimes take on a rather Balkan character: some people are unduly positive about the Ottoman Empire as a staunch outpost of tolerance, while others say it was a bad thing and Ataturk is to be thanked for smashing it. What was the real situation under the Ottoman Empire? Well, it died the death after World War One, so there's not much to be had from eyewitness testimony. To understand the Ottomans based on Balkan family legends on their fifth and sixth generations at least, is to build a house in sand in an earthquake zone. Historians tend to push their own ethnicity, sure, so that is why you have to know the primary documents yourself.... It's not that understanding is not to be had. It's just hard to get. If you really want insight into the Balkans, you'll have to use your time and your wetware. You'll have to get some experiences of your own on the ground, and also read serious history and geography: yes, the brick-like kind with masses of footnotes, and yes, you have to read the footnotes. Kaplan doesn't even tells us what grounding he has for his factual assertions. It's not that he ought to, in a journalistic book, but rather that if you want actual understanding, you have to know this. Kaplan is a single, intelligent, engaged observer, and he has written a travel book. Between descriptions of his own experience, he gives bursts of potted narrative history, with no analysis or qualification. On these terms, the book is interesting. An appropriately skeptical reader who knew nothing about the Balkans might use it for a first introduction, before going on to something more serious. A person who already knows about the Balkans is likely to find Kaplan's unsystematic flashes of insight rather interesting. Some reviewers want this book to be an open door, revealing the truth about the Balkans, but it's not. It's a good read with some real moments of understanding, and moments of ignorance and just racism.
Rating:
Summary: A decent introduction to the Balkans
Review: Balkan Ghosts is a good introduction to the Balkans - but do not expect much more. Kaplan writes about the Balkans country by country (including Greece, appropriately enough), providing little viginettes of each nation and some historical background. There is very little discussion of local society, and it is almost devoid of local "flavor." If you are searching for a light, solid introduction to the Balkans without the ethnic partisanship that is so common, this is a good place to start. If you are already familiar with the Balkans, its people or have even the slightest exposure to Balkan history, I recommend Misha Glenny's The Balkans.
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