Balkan Ghosts : A Journey Through History

Rating:
Summary: Insightful, readable, sensitive tour of the Balkans
Review: I have read Balkan Ghosts now several times--out of general interest and since I am researching my families "Saxon" history in the Transylvania area. He book is reliable, well-researched, coupled with the sensitve observations of a veteran travel writer. If your interest is bee-keeping or sewing, regardless, you will like this book and be glad that you read it. And, some chapters take a little digesting, for they can be shocking, so do one or two chapters at a time.;

Rating:
Summary: An interesting travel memoir, but a failure as history.
Review: Kaplan's book is thought-provoking and makes a good read for entertainment purposes. However, anyone hoping to gain an understanding of history in the Balkans should go elsewhere. I have worked in extensively in Croatia and traveled throughout the region, and Kaplan repeats a lot of ignorance. Many times, he avoids basic scholarship and recounts legends of historical events. His method of investigating locales provides texture but not accuracy. It would be as if a foreign journalist traveled through America, relied on old travel guides for reference, and interviewed people at the local diner about the Civil War and wrote their versions of events as an accurate portrayal of the US.

Rating:
Summary: A Great Introduction
Review: A colleague at the Foreign Service Institute gave me this book to read as I left to get on a plane nearly four years ago. It was my first introduction to the Balkans and inspired further study. This is one of those books you must purchase so that you can read it again and again.

Rating:
Summary: As travelogue, a 10; as history, a 0
Review: Robert Kaplan's _Balkan Ghosts_ is marketed as both a work of history and a travel essay. As a travel piece it works well: Kaplan describes places seen and people met in a fluid, journalistic style that carries the reader along, never allowing him/her to sink into boredom. As many a successful journalist does, Kaplan seeks out the most colorful characters and most memorable quotes in each of the hotspots he visits. Breezy travel literature, however, should not be mistaken for solid history. Colorful characters tend, paradoxically, to see the world in black and white. Most have axes to grind, and Kaplan reproduces their versions of history without comment. He misses a wonderful opportunity to teach the reader about the abuse of history by ideologists in this region. Take, for example, his treatment of the Battle of Kosovo Polje in 1389, the sacred symbol of Serb nationalists. Kaplan gives the romantic nationalist version (pp. 37-39): the Serb knights, "their armor engraved in gold and silver, and magnificent plumes atop their helmets", go down in glory before the hordes of half-naked, Mongoloid Turks. A Serb nobleman sacrifices himself to save the day, assassinating the Turkish Sultan, but in vain: the Serbs are defeated and their leader, Lazar, is captured and executed. If Kaplan had done a little reading (beyond _Black Lamb and Grey Falcon_, the twin-volume progeny of Rebecca West's obsession with the romantic idea of Yugoslavia, born after she finally paid a brief visit to the country in 1937), he could also have given a version based upon scholarship: the Sultan and Lazar died upon the battlefield, and it was the "Turks" (whose army was made up of Muslim Turks and Christian Bulgarians, Serbs and Albanians) who withdrew at the end of the day, leaving the battlefield to the "Serbs" (whose army was made up of Serbs, Bosnians, Albanians and Wallachians). The battle was a defeat for "the Serbs" only because they failed to unite behind a new leader. The book is rife with such distortions of history. Read it for fun--for fun it certainly is--but please do not assume that it improves your knowledge of the Balkans.

Rating:
Summary: One of the very finest book on this region
Review: This is probably one of the very best books on this highly complicated region. It is easy to read and understand. Kaplan knows perfectly well how to melt his own observations with books he has read. And he must have read tons of it... If I had no time and could read only one book on this area - and particularly on Romania - my choice would be "Balkan Ghosts".

Rating:
Summary: An outstanding book on the history of the Balkans
Review: One of the most enjoyable books I have ever read on the Balkans. Mr. Kaplan's writing style and obvious love of the topic makes the book difficult to put down. This is a "must read" for anyone interested in learning about a region which has once again become an area of concern for the world .

Rating:
Summary: A wonderful book, insightful and sympathetic.
Review: Balkan Ghosts is one of the best books I have read recently. It gives a remarkable overview of the Balkans in 1989 and is remarkably foresightful. I strongly recommend it to travellers (arm chair or real) and to historians and politicians

Rating:
Summary: A Fascinating Journey Through Europe's Third World
Review: As Mr. Kaplan illuminates in this rich, insightful work, the countries of the Balkans both in the past and present have more in common with the chaotic third world than with their rich West European neighbors. The author serves as our guide on a vivid and journey through the history of this region, packing in sights and experiences as varied as a meeting with Milovan Djilas and a clandestine visit to a Romanian forced labor camp, as contradictory as a tour of Albania's slums and a visit to the wealthy fleshpots of the Greek islands, and as bizarre as stays in a Bucharest hotel swarming with cross-dressing prostitutes and a desolate Yugoslav resort torn by ethnic violence. Mr. Kaplan crams a more comprehensive and understandable vision of the realities of the Balkans than many works three or four times as long as this slim volume. If you're looking for one book to make sense of the situation in the Balkans today, "Balkan Ghosts" is exactly what you need

Rating:
Summary: A compelling and disturbing study of dysfunctional societies
Review: The breaching of the Berlin wall exposed a collection of oppressed and disturbed societies huddling together like abused orphans in the corner of Europe that was once the USSR. Mr. Kaplan captures, in the language of a layman, the tragic human and social consequences of totalitarianism. In my opinion only two writers have managed to articulate the experience of living beneath a jackboot; George Orwell and Robert D. Kaplan. This book is compelling and disturbing.

Rating:
Summary: A great read.
Review: One of the most fascinating books I have read in a long while. For those who want to gain an understanding of what is currently happening in the Balkans, this is a well written survey of the history mixed with a personal journey documenting the current attitudes of the people living in the Balkans today. The uncanny resemblance he found in his travels with those who traveled the same roads in the early part of the century is both sad and frightening. The book clearly illustrates that those who know too much of their history are doomed to repeat the savagery and bloodshed of their predecessors