Ocean State Libraries

Throughout history, the Balkans have been a crossroads, a zone of endless military, cultural and economic mixing and clashing between Europe and Asia, Christianity and Islam, Catholicism and Orthodoxy. Subject to violent shifts of borders, rulers and belief systems at the hands of the world's great empires—from the Byzantine to the Habsburg and Ottoman—the Balkans are often called Europe's tinderbox and a seething cauldron of ethnic and religious...

"A history of the Balkans, focusing on the events and processes within and outside the region that have played a significant role in the shaping of the Balkan countries and the world's perception of them."--

From the assassination that triggered World War I to the ethnic warfare in Serbia, Bosnia, and Croatia, the Balkans have been the crucible of the twentieth century, the place where terrorism and genocide first became tools of policy. Chosen as one of the Best Books of the Year by the New York Times, and greeted with critical acclaim as 'the most insightful and timely work on the Balkans to date'-The Boston Globe, Kaplan's prescient, enthralling, and...