Customer Reviews

Albania: Eye of the Balkan Vortex

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Albania recently was recognized for its critical humanitarian role as a safe haven for the 600,000 Kosovar men, women and children who fled from the carnage of Serbian police and Molosvich's military henchmen. Albania also was seen nightly on national television as the critical staging area for NATO during the Kosovo War, March through June 1999.

But few know that the people of this small European Baltic country are descendants of the Illyrians, who were the first people to use iron for tools and weapons. As well, few recognize that Mother Teresa, astronaut William Georgry, actor John Belushi and Dr. Ferid Murad, Nobel Laureate in medicine for his work in the development of Viagra, are all of Albanian heritage.

Even today Albania remains one of the least-known European countries since it was isolated by post-war Communism until 1991. Books on Albania in the English language are scarce, an issue which American-born Albanian Lou Giaffo seeks to remedy in this engaging but limited book.

Giaffo writes Albanian history from 1500 B.C. to modern times without the drab, cumbersome academic prose that one often finds in histories. He has a fresh writing style that keeps the reader engaged.

However, there are significant weaknesses in this work. Most Albanians who I spoke with cite four events in the last 60 years that significantly shaped Albania: Communism/Hoxha 1945, the Religious Purge 1967, the fall of Communism 1991 and the Pyramid Scheme 1997. Giaffo does an ample job covering the first and third of these critical historical events, but he failed to include the second and fourth. For a historical text with a 1999 publish date, these are significant omissions, as is the absence of an index (unheard of in any serious historical text). It is my hope that Giaffo follows up and addresses these issues in a second edition. As a writer he is both engaging and informative, a wonderful combination for a writer of history.

Conditionally Recommended