Customer Reviews

The Balkans: From Constantinople to Communism

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

No footnotes. This is the biggest drawback of the book, as you cannot check the veracity of the author, and have to take his word for it, when the author shows some bias (e.g., he has a slight bias towards the Bulgarians it seems, as he was a former Fulbright scholar in Bulgaria). For example, the story of Basil Bulgaroktonos blinding of the Bulgarians in 1014 is deemed fiction by modern scholarship, as the story was first published in the 1200s (when blinding was common, though the author does not mention this), but the lack of footnotes means the reader cannot check the primary source of this revisionist history.

The author writes decent but not great prose (compared to nonfiction by John McPhee or Bill Bryson for example, but that's a tall order).

The author's economics are laughable (as is common with historians), for example ascribing to dependency theory (that suppliers of raw materials get exploited by advanced countries--so how do you explain the success of Chile, which depends on the export of raw materials?), but that's a minor matter. A bigger problem is that the author is sometimes inconsistent, saying that the Great Powers cannot delineate the borders of Balkan countries, as nobody can, then later saying the Great Powers got it wrong in drawing the borders--so which is it? The author makes a strained comparison between the Ottoman system of administration and the European Union, but really does not explain this analogy well.

The book glosses over the 20th century, but given the vast scope of the subject matter, the entire Balkans, that's understandable.

All in all an OK introductory book to the Balkans, and given that so few books exist on this topic it deserves four stars.

This is an area of the world that's simply fascinating. Read Hupchick to find out more. His style is lucid and flows for a solid reading experience; he is knowledgeable and displays great depth of understanding for Balkan history and complexity.