The Bulgarian history is traced from medieval times through Ottoman rule and the cultural flowering of the nineteenth century to the turbulent years of the twentieth century. The story is told in straightforward, non-academic style.

Darnforth explores the construction of Macedonian national identity as a result of the establishment of a state structure after 1945 and of the state policy in the context of the complicated history of Macedonia's relations with neighbouring states. The historical and anthropological evidence he presents shows how changeable, and how dependent on historical, political and social circumstances national identities are.

This is very well written even-handed critical analysis of the national myths and ideologies of the Great-Serbian and Great-Albanian nationalisms. The book offers a lucid examination of the Yugoslav disintegration, the Belgrade and the Kosovar policy, and a sober discussion of the international attempts at mediating the conflict.

This book is a collection of excellent studies, based on thorough fieldwork, concerning various aspects of intercultural exchange, especially between Muslims and Christians, in Kosovo. Among the many revealing studies – to be read, according to the author, as ‘ethnographic snapshots’, we can mention ‘The Exodus of Kosovo Croats: A Chronicle of Ethnic Unmixing’, ‘Christian Shrines and Muslim Pilgrims: Joint Pilgrimages and Ambiguous Sanctuaries’, The Martyrs of Stublla: Albanian Crypto-Catholics and the Franciscan Mission’, ‘The Making of the Egyptians in Kosovo and Macedonia’, ‘The Kosovo Epic: Religion and Nationalism among the Serbs’. Duijzings, a Dutch anthropologist teaching in London and Amsterdam, analyses myths, but also challenges dominant Western myths about the Balkans, particularly those pertaining to ethnic conflict and violence in the region as the result of ancient tribal hatred and irreconcilable animosities. His most important contribution to a better understanding of the region is the way he shows the notion of clearly demarcated ethnic groups in the Balkans is highly illusory.

This intense and authoritative study is divided into three sections: the General Evolution; The Centre and the Regions; and The Intellectual Foundations. From these titles it is clear that the book is not confined to narrative history of the old school, though nor does it dismiss that approach. It is strong on the social and the intellectual development of the area from the renaissance and the reformation through to the enlightenment. It was widely acclaimed upon publication, was the joint winner of the Wolfson Literary Award for History in 1979.

Ivo Goldstein is Professor of Medieval History at the University of Zagreb and a former Director of the Institute for Croatian History of the University of Zagreb. In Croatia: A History, Professor Goldstein presents popular but scholarly history of Croatian culture and national character, both in its own terms and in relation to it's immediate neighbors.

Gordy attempts to answer the question "How does the regime of Slobodan Milosevic and his Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) remain in power?" by looking in Yuogoslavia’s daily life where the regime largely succeeded in making alternatives to its rule unavailable. The book is sophisticated and witty sociology of everyday life, a study of the political potential of culture.

A courageous approach to national propaganda in the Balkans, showing that all countries without exception manipulated the facts (history, geography, linguistics, religion, culture, etc.) according to their political claims. The usual picture of "small Balkan countries, victims of the decisions of the Great Powers" is radically reversed: the small countries are shown manipulating cleverly the Western public opinion. An impressive bibliography of hundreds of nationalistic pamphlets provides a solid basis to this remarkable work.

An excellent analytical outline of the Ottoman history from its foundation by a British historian, based on detailed analysis of Ottoman, Greek, Slavic, and West European sources. The period under study is full of events important in the history (and abuse of history) of the Balkan. The carefully sifted evidence, split from myths, challenges the various national mythologies that are current among Greeks, Serbs, Albanians, Wallachians, Turks, and Bulgarians.

A leading Turkish historian's study of the Ottoman Empire during the period when it grew into a great Middle Eastern and South European power. Major part of the book is concerned with the role of religion and warfare in everyday life, as well as traditions of statecraft, administration, trade, social values, scholarship, and land policies.

Deftly combining archival sources with evocative life histories, Anastasia Karakasidou attempts to bring welcome clarity to the contentious debate over ethnic identities and nationalist ideologies in Greek Macedonia.

A highly valuable approach for all those who try to understand the Balkans as a whole and not only as mere juxtaposition of separate peoples. The fundamental problems of Balkan historiography, its evolution, and its sources are presented in a simple and direct way, with accurate examples and maps, in a systematic comparative approach.

The book deals with the origin and development of the "Yugoslav idea" from 1918 to the collapse of the country in 1991. Lampe's primary expertise is economic history, and this is evident in his strong analysis of Yugoslavia's frequent economic problems, which would be a crucial factor in the country's eventual downfall.

In the first part of the book, the doyen of Oriental and Islam studies offers a chronological account of the social and political events since the end of the 18^th century, which led to the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the rise of Turkish nationalism. The author highlights the slow penetration of Western elements, and the reform tendencies in Ottoman politics. The second part is a detailed study of the intellectual and political history of the late Ottoman society and the period of consolidation of power of Attaturk's movement. In a thematic approach, Lewis analyses the development of nationalism, statehood, religion, culture, and social elite's. His discussion of diplomatic and commercial relations between the West and East provides insight in misunderstandings that led the Western policymaking.

An even-handed overview of the cultural and political clash between Christianity and Islam from the late 15^th to the early 19^th centuries, offering a lucid analysis of the political and economic motives that prompted the Ottoman Empire to welcome the Jews expelled from Spain. The book examines the multiple causes of why the West gained the upper hand in the course of the period.

Almost certainly the most original and one of the most important books on Bulgarian history ever published. But it has a much wider significance: as an examination of the problems of cultural co-existence in a world of changing political over lordship it should be read everywhere in the Balkans. It deals not only with the towns themselves but more importantly with the survival and evolution of ethnic customs and everyday life from systems of weights and measures to cuisine, sports, and festivals.

A team of eleven French scholars sums up six centuries of Ottoman history, taking into account the latest results of research in this complicated and controversial field. This precise and clear book is of great help to anyone trying to understand the history of the Balkans and the Near East. The book provides many indexes and a wide-ranging bibliography.

Mazower’s book is a very accessible and lucid account of the history of the Balkans. He focuses on the main tendencies and developing, but also offers many original insights and challenges many wide-spread Western popular prejudices concerning the Balkans. For this reason, the book is a good introduction for those who are not acquainted with the region, but also a refreshing survey for those more familiar with it. The Balkan reader might be interested to learn about the impartial and balanced way the Balkans are approached by professional Western historians, still untouched by what Todorova has called ‘Balkanism’.

This has long been the standard, single-volume English text on the Byzantine empire, though, as the subtitle suggests, its concentration is overwhelmingly on the European provinces of the empire. Written by an acclaimed and accomplished scholar. After opening chapters on ‘The Geographical Setting’ and ‘Barbarians in the Balkans’, it has a basically chronological approach but also has chapters on ‘Factors in Cultural Diffusion’, ‘Religion and Law’, and ‘Literature and Art’. It is generously illustrated and has useful maps.

This work of synthesis, clarity, and precision covers a crucial period in the history of the Balkans. The author treats only a century and a half, instead of taking a much longer period as other works on the Balkans do. For students this gives the advantage that they are not discouraged by an avalanche of names and facts. The book contains fifteen chronological chapters, half of which are devoted to the years 1900-1945. The author integrates the economic history, not just as a background to the political and social developments, but as a driving force. This puts into perspective the way the history of the Balkans is all too often seen: as an antique tragedy or a Viennese operate. Pavlowitch, instead, underscores the difficulties of a peripheral region to integrate in the industrial development of Europe.

This monumental and pioneering work has received a very small circulation, especially in the Balkans (where its price reaches astronomic proportions). It provides a very clear analytical account of the various Moslem communities in their historical evolution after the fall of Ottoman rule in Albania, Bulgaria, Greece, Romania, and former Yugoslavia until the 1980s. The book contains an extensive bibliography.

On contemporary Turkey.

Based on a very successful television series this book provides an excellent overall view of the Yugoslav tragedy from the mid-1980s until the Dayton Agreement. The authors interviewed most of the major participants in the drama and provide a number of illuminating quotations. The level of analysis is consistently high and this is one of the most intelligent and perceptive of the books which have so far appeared on the subject. It is well provided with maps and has an extensive and extremely useful list of characters.

The most comprehensive history of the Balkans till the Second World War.

This is a third reprint of a collection of path-breaking studies of the development of nationalism in Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Greece, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and Yugoslavia through the mid 1960s. The book offers an update in a new introduction, and a bibliography of sources covering the developments in the region since 1960s.

"An interpretation of southeastern Europe under Ottoman rule from which few will fail to learn. As always, Sugar brings a fresh view to familiar material, and fresh material to familiar issues...his book is far more than simply a 'welcome addition to the field.' It is a unique interpretation of the entire Ottoman experience in the Balkans."--Slavic Review

A volume written by country specialists. The chapters include selected documents as well as essays. The nationalisms (rather than countries) specifically considered are the Albanian, Bulgarian, Czech and Slovak, Greek, Hungarian, Polish, Romanian, and Yugoslavian. These national chapters are framed by an introduction and a conclusion.

In this book an eyewitness to the breakup of Yugoslavia provides the first full account of the rise, fall, and rebirth of Croatia from its medieval origins to today's tentative peace. Marcus Tanner describes the creation of the first Croatian state; its absorption into feudal Hungary in the Middle Ages; the catastrophic experience of the Ottoman invasion; the absorption of the diminished country into Habsburg Austria; the evolution of modern Croatian nationalism after the French Revolution; and the circumstances that propelled Croatia into the arms of Nazi Germany and the

brutal, home-grown "Ustashe" movement in the Second World War. Finally, drawing on firsthand knowledge of many of the leading figures in the conflict, Tanner explains the failure of Tito's Communists to solve Yugoslavia's tortured national problem by creating a federal state, and the violent implosion after his death.

Inspired by Said’s "Orientalism" but still critical of his approach, Todorova’s book will long remain of crucial importance for the understanding of the Balkans. Based on a extremely rich selection of travelogues, diplomatic accounts, academic surveys, journalism, and belles-lettres in many languages, Imagining the Balkans explores the ontology of the Balkans from the eighteenth century to the present day, uncovering the ways in which an insidious intellectual tradition was constructed, became mythologized, and is still being transmitted as discourse.

Traces the concept of the Yugoslav national identity through the three stages of the "construction" of national cultural tradition(s) in language and literature: the canonising of Yugoslav literature, especially national oral epic; the unitary culture of Brotherhood; the rise and spread of ethnic nationalism in the 1970's. Shows conclusively that the Yugoslav national idea was not something "entirely artificial" as has been claimed in most works on the disintegration of Yugoslavia, neither was it "seething with ancient hatreds". It was rather the abandonment of the cultural nation building on the part of both political and cultural elites created the conditions for the collapse of the Yugoslav state.

Against a geopolitical background (superbly illustrated with fourteen maps), his book covers the last decade of the Roman empire as a superpower, the catastrophic crisis of the seventh century, and the means whereby the embattled Byzantine empire hung on in Constantinople and Asia Minor until the Abbasid Caliphate's decline opened up new perspectives for Christian power in the Near East. A special feature is Whittow's coverage of Byzantium's neighbors, allies, and enemies in Europe and Asia.

Wolff argues that the conceptualization of Europe as divided into Eastern and Western areas is a creation of eighteenth-century Enlightenment thinkers. He discusses the writings of eighteenth-century travelers to Ottoman lands, Poland, and Russia; representations of Eastern Europe in imaginative literature; political geography and cultural cartography; Voltaire's correspondence with Catherine the Great; Rousseau's Considerations on the Government of Poland; and depictions of Eastern Europeans as "barbarians" in opposition to the "civilized" West.

Woodward served as a senior advisor to the top UN official in the former Yugoslavia in 1994, and as a special representative of UN Secretary General. The book provides considerable in-depth analysis of the underlying economic and structural causes of Yugoslavia's break-up. Woodward also tries to broaden the scope of her analysis to consider the ways in which the wider international context influenced events in the former Yugoslavia and even fomented their intensification.

The first volume deals with the history of Albanians, Bulgarians, Croats, Greeks, Romanians, Serbs, and Slovenes in the 18th and 19th centuries, the Ottoman or Habsburg Empires and the different conditions of the two. The major emphasis, however, is on the national movements, including their programs and the revolutionary activity associated with them. The second volume begins with a discussion of internal developments in Bulgaria, Greece, Montenegro, Romania, and Serbia from 1878, and of the Romanian and South Slav nationalities of the Habsburg Empire from 1867. It then examines the territorial expansion of some of these states, the Balkan wars of 1912 and 1913, World War I, and the peace settlements after 1918, which fulfilled Romanian and Serbian aspirations, but left many other nationalities dissatisfied. A large part of this book deals with the wartime experiences, the establishment of the post-war Communist regimes, and the divergent paths followed by the five states from 1945 to 1980.