This is an odd book in every respect, and it reflects an odd historical phenomenon. Sure it is a fact that Albaina--Russia for that matter--industrialised and remained a soveriegn state throughout a period of terrible dictatorship. But these are simple facts, and not bases for a historical reevaluation of the true character of regimes.

This book reflects an attempt by the author to set himself apart by siding with a new historical school, one that I hope and have confidence will be disproven.

We owe as much to the twentieth century and the bitter lessons it has taught us, or most of us I should say.

Modern history witnessed nothing like Enver Hoxha's reign of terror over His own people.From His establishment in 1945,Albania was turned into Gulag,although that is only euphemism for real state of affairs.Untill 1948's Yugoslavia's split with Stalin,His country recevied enormous ammount of help from Belgrade,although it was ally of Axis,but latter He becomed so loyal to Stalin,that He broke-up with U.S.S.R. after Kruschev's turning away from stalinism and embraced Mao's China.So,the idea that Hoxha was pro-independence leaders do not agrees with fact that under His regime,Albania was always attached to "Big Brother" kind of country,in a most servile manner.He brought total devastation and unprecedented poverty to Albania-The Land of Million Bunkers.Compared with Albania,Albanians in Yugoslavia lived in California.Yet,Author glorifies Hoxha as some kind of positive figure,as if His policy is recomendable one for todays World.

O'Donnel represents "Getty-Rittersporn"-phenomenon, a new scholarship among Western historicians that aims to examine the history of Marxism-Leninism, not at bias, but as history. This objectivity is respectable and refutes the previous Cold War knee-jerk judgements perfectly.

O'Donnels work represents admirable honesty and respect regards historical facts. And the FACT IS, that within only 20 years, Albanians achieved what would had been taken 200 years in capitalist society. I definitely recommed this book for anyone interested in sincere research of history.

Mr. Fred A. Reed wrote a compelling and extremely readable book about the murky puzzles of the Balkans. His intentions were very noble indeed, but it takes much more to understand the fine details of the notion of nationality in an area where the formation of national states first happened only 80 years ago and wasn't consolidated until the 1950s only to start being challenged again in the 1990s. Similar to many of his fellow authors, he falls victim of the Slavic propaganda concerning Macedonia. To a person who doesn't have any picture of the overall situation concerning ethnicities in the geographical area of Macedonia, the emotional descriptions of endured hardships given by Slavic-speaking persons from Greek Macedonia appear heart-breaking and unsurprisingly end up demonizing Greece. In a region where different ethnicities lived side by side there are many parallel names for the villages and towns. Mr. Reed is impressed by a man with Slavic identity who "launched into a catalogue of place-names whose Slavonic resonance he immediately recognized: Golishani, Negush, ...". I don't know about Golishani, but Negush is the Slavic name for Naousa, a town who has never seen any sizeable Slavic minority. In Greek, New York is called "Nea Yorki" and although it is true that there are around 200,000 Greek-American in Queens, this hardly designs New York as a Greek city! I was very upset from the fact that Mr. Reed used the Slavic name along the Greek one when talking about the Greek towns of Florina and Edessa. His pro-Slavic propaganda friends probably never told him that in the late 19th century, Ohrid/ Ahrida (now in the FYROM), the town described as a Mother for the Bulgarian (later changed to "Macedonian") nation was 32% ethnically Greek, according to the German scholar Hermann Wendel. Bitola/ Monastiri, Krushevo/ Krousovo, Strumica/ Stromnitsa, Veles/ Velessa, Gevgelija/ Gevgeli, were town in what is now the FYROM with an ethnic Greek majority or sizeable minority. So, although it is true that Aridea/ Meglena is ethnically Slavic, one has to see the greater view of the problem. Mr. Reed outspokenly adopts the Slavic propaganda and claims that as many as 270.000 people in Greece have a Slavic identity. In the last elections, in June 1999, the Slavic nationalists participated with a political formation of their own and only got a meager 1,800 votes out of more than 7.5 million voters. Greece may have many flaws, but its democratic institutions are impeccable. There are so many things I'd like to comment on Mr. Reed's book, but there is not enough space. I'd like to comment on his note that only 10% of the inhabitants of pre-1912 Macedonia were Greeks and give you the pre-1912 Turkish statistics stating that Macedonia as a whole was 55% Greek. And we all know that the Turks hardly were sympathizers of the Greek national cause! I'd like to write about the Greek atrocities who were only committed during war and only as retaliation to the devastation suffered by Greeks in what is now Bulgaria and FYROM. I'd like to write about the reason why we, as Greeks, do not want to cede the name "Macedonia" to the Slavs. I'd like to transfer to you the rage I feel whenever my 3,000 year old local and national identity are being challenged by a people who first appeared in the Southern Balkans 1,300 years ago. I'd like to transfer the frustration I feel when my history is being raped by a Slavic people who come and tell me that Alexander the Great, a figure sung in ancient and medieval Greek folk tunes and recognized all the way to India as being the quintessence of Greekness, was in fact of another nationality. As I think of my cousins who are second generation Greeks of the USA and have a principally American national identity, I'd like to explain why the Vlachs are Greeks and how the only legitimate absolute definition of nationality is a person's self- identification, not language, not religion, not genes. Mr. Reed's would get a 3 or 4 star rating for its readibility, but I only give it 1 star as it sheds very little light on the complexities of the Balkan reality and despite his good intentions, does very little to reveal the truth.

The name of the book is largely inspired by the spring 1943 departure of Thessaloniki's Sephardic Jews to their deaths in German concentration camps; and it is from Thessaloniki that the author departs for a train journey into the past and present of a part of the Balkans where Jews and many others coexisted under the Ottomans for several centuries. As Greek language (if not culture) did have considerable influence over the Christian peoples of that region during the Ottoman period, it is natural for the author to take a closer look at the contact of Greek institutions and governments towards them and the Ottomans during and after the period in question.

It is fair to say that Hellenism -- whatever that means! -- has been dominated by the Romans, the Jews (by way of Christianity) and the Turks. The first two conquerors were at least partially overpowered from within (by way of the Eastern Eastern Empire (Byzantium) and the Greek language), but the third one stood its ground: an exception that, quite naturally, most individuals or institutions "closely associated" with Hellenism would rather forget about. Mr. Reed has trouble understanding or even forgiving this "forgetfulness". Inquisitive and poetic traveler as he happens to be, he surprises the reader from time to time with such fascinating incidents as Greece's failure to "remember" that a 19th century Egyptian king was born an Albanian Muslim in the Greek town of Kavala.

Much less innocently, Mr. Reed likens the capture -- nowadays political correctness hardly allows one to say "liberation" -- of Thessaloniki by the Greek army in 1912 to the seize of Sarajevo 80 years later: both events reflect on a lack of "cosmopolitanism", he argues in passing. With the ghastly events of Bosnia very fresh in their minds -- the book was published in 1996 -- contemporary readers are likely to lose any sympathy for Greek gains against the Turkish oppressor, be it in 1912 or 90 years earlier: the very war of independence and the existence of the modern Greek state may now be viewed, under very contemporary lenses, as unfortunate deviations from the Ottoman "cosmopolitanism"! (More to the point, Thessaloniki fell to the Greeks quickly and relatively peacefully, and its two largest ethnic groups, Jews and Turks, vanished only decades later due to much bigger events associated with the two world wars.)

This fundamental mistrust toward the Greek nation sets the tone for the rest of the book. We are led to believe, or at least suspect, that the Balkan Christians' interest in educating themselves or their offspring in Greek had more to do with the cunningness of the Greek Patriarchate than with the self-evident importance of Greek as the language of the Bible, culture and Balkan commerce. (And yet eight decades after the Bulgarian monk Paisi called for Bulgarian learning and awakening in 1760, Constantin Miladinov was translating Plutarch into *modern* Greek ... before Russian instigation turned him into a Bulgarian patriot (later to be claimed by the "Macedonians"), that is.) And the conflict between Greece and FYROM is viewed as having its roots at the oppression of a very distinct (?) ethnic group ("Macedonians") by an intolerant nation state (Greece) throughout the 20th century, rather than at the collision between two well defined (by church and school), equally intolerant, nationalisms (Greek and Bulgarian). And so on.

On the positive side, the book makes for a very interesting reading and exploration of Balkan history and folklore. For example, we hear an Albanian poet stating that "(most) Albanians became Moslems in order to protect their language and resist the Turks" and an ethnic Greek in Albania complaining about the Greeks' lack of interest in their own classic works (and language). The situation in Kosovo (before NATO's intervention) is examined quite thoroughly and vividly, even though the author has barely bothered to interview members of the Serbian minority. His discussion of FYROM varies from the situation in Albanian-dominated Tetovo to an otherwise open-minded local woman's claim that the world's strongest dog is Macedonian, not Serbian.

Back to Thessaloniki, the author takes a thorough and balanced look at the development of the "Mother of Israel"'s Jewish community between their expulsion from Spain and their extermination by the Nazis. He even delves, assisted by Greek writer Tolis Kazantzis, into the "communist" politics of the 14th century movement of the Zealots: not a bad idea, given that their contemporary and sympathizer, Nikolaos Kavasilas, the man who wrote that "God's love for people depleted Him", is still popular among Thessalonican intellectuals! (Neither Kavasilas nor Metropolitan Eustathios' legendary 12th century work "Commentary to Homer" are mentioned as strong links between Thessaloniki's past and present; at least colorful writer Ilias Petropoulos has been interviewed, although we never hear why exactly he left Thessaloniki for Paris with "no intention of ever returning".)

Having grown up in an ethnically pure Thessaloniki, I would like to assure Mr. Reed and his readers that my hometown was a vibrant city, despite its lost cosmopolitanism; and it is becoming even more interesting now that immigrants from Eastern Europe and elsewhere are taking the place of its lost or assimilated minorities (and majorities). Building a Greek Thessaloniki (and state) under very difficult circumstances was certainly not a perfectly smooth process, and our Balkan neighbors may well have some fairly justified complains against us: while I do not feel that we should be apologetic or rueful about the past (and our inevitable manipulation of it), as Mr. Reed seems to suggest, I would recommend that we Greeks, and other interested parties as well, read his book as a good guide on such neighborly bitterness.

An exquisitely perceptive dissection of the Balkan predicament. While handling extremely difficult material, the author achieves a rare blend of compelling style, thought-provoking observations, humanist humour in the midst of one of the grimest human socio-political contexts in the world. This is no mere journalistic writing - it's almost a new genre. I would read any book that Fred Reed produces, regardless of my personal interests.

For an informative and un biased read on the Kosovo and balkan issue, there are much better books out there than this one. For one, you're well more than half way through the book before the author even gets to the Kosovo issue, although the first part is a fairly unbiased quick refresher of the last century's wars. Once the author finally does get to the Kosovo topic, it is a quick and uninformative heavily biased review that hardly reflects on the true issues of Kosovo, Serbia and the former republics of Yugoslavia. To save you the time of reading it i'll lay out the most ignorant statement in the book: from page 190: "If the US and NATO had not intervened, the Serbs would have settled the Kosovo issue, by ethnic cleansing. The Kosovars would have been pushed into Albania and forcibly reunited with their own people. Kosovo would be owned and inhabited exclusively by Serbs. Monstrous though it would have been to let the Milosevic regime profit from its crimes, it would all be over." Right. And the humanitarian disasters in Macedonia and Albania which hardly have the means to support their own people? The Turkish-Kurd, Spanish-Basque, Albanian-Greek issues that may be affected by such an outcome? It would be over according to this author. Common ignorance from people that weren't there or don't really know. For a good read on Balkan topics i suggest 'Yugoslavia: Death of a Nation', KOSOVO or BOSNIA by Noel Malcholm. For a good read on the atrocities of what goes on in that part of the world how about any chronology of Srebrenica.

I found Fromkin's writing style to be unorganized. He has a lot of information to give (not all of which is dependable, by the way), but he skips around from the 20th century to the Middle Ages to all the time periods in-between, and quite frankly, I found it a bit hard to follow at times.
Fromkin is very confident about his information, and seems to think he's a definitive source on the subject. The book left me with a feeling that I was learning from an expert in Balkan politics--but beware. As a soldier stationed in the Balkans I can tell you, that if you're basing your knowledge of this region off of this book--or any one book--you've only really scratched the surface.

I have read many similar books before.

The book itself has very little to do with Kososvo at all. Tito for example gets less then a page. The way he ruled maybe a line. That he ruled by killing over a million Yugoslavians is never even mentioned.

It is a study basically of the history of US foreign policy. Nothing very orginal or good either. Just some sweeping generalisations that would suggest that US foreign policy is purely a produce of the ideals of the current US president.

I read and enjoyed City of Tears in electronic format on my Rocket eBook. A story rich in detail, it is set in the violent era of pre-Mongolian central Asia. Balkan delves deeply into the lives and times of rival nomadic warrior tribes, each fighting for territory and supremity. If you like your books filled with blood and mayhem, this is the story for you!

This book, while well-written and undoubtedly well researched, suffers slightly from the author's choice of words in dialogue which sometimes sound colloquial and modern.

Eric Balkan is quite a storyteller. He spins a good yarn in "City of Tears", mixing historical fact with fiction. The story has almost as many characters as a Russian novel but, despite the exotic names, is not difficult to follow or confusing. However, he's in dire need of an editor, as the multitude of grammatical errors, punctuation goofs, and spelling mistakes proved fatally distracting to this reader.

Moderate Serb nationalism is the consolation prize one expects when looking for dissent from that camp. When a Serb author shows a willingness to be the first to stop making excuses and to disavow fully genocidal Serb nationalism (what a hard thing to do!) that we will have a book worth reading. This isn't it.

If you want some insight into the psyche of that pugnacious and obnoxious defendent at the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia, this is the book to read. Slavoljub Djukic, a respected Serbian journalist, has been following the career of Slobodan Milosevic (as well as his wife Mirjana Markovic) since the rise of this dull communist functionary to national prominence in the late 1980s. Djukic researched his subject meticulously, and made good use of his many contacts in Serbian/Yugoslav political and media circles, to say nothing of his keen powers of observation over the last 10+ years. There are vivid descriptions of the personalities of both Milosevic and Markovic, whose influence on her husband was/is legendary. Djukic also provides a wealth of information on many other important figures in Serbian politics over the course of the last decade, from Milosevic's many accomplices and yes-men to opposition leaders. Another valuable, but more indirect, aspect of this book is that it provides some insight into the views of moderate Serb nationalists (like Djukic) who greatly opposed Milosevic's regime. This is essential reading for a better understanding of Serbian politics and recent Serbian history - although I suspect a new, updated edition is in the works given Milosevic's imprisonment and subsequent, very recent extradition to the Hague.

As an avid reader about the problems, which have plagued the Balkans throughtout the 90s I found the book to be both informative from a personal narrative perspective, but tiresome from the repeated diatribes directed towards those who were not pro-Bosniac. While little argument can be made against the documented atrocities committed against the city of Sarajevo, no effort was made to look at the Bosnian-Muslim leadership and their role/complicity in the conflict. For anyone interested in the personal tragedies faced by those who lived in the city while under siege, it is a great story. Overall though, I thought the book was diminished by the often-repeated diatribes against just about anyone connected with the then-ongoing peace talks (Vance-Owen), or the UNPROFOR mission.

I enjoyed reading "The testimony of a Bosnian" because it was not only a realistic portrayal of the Serb's aggression on Bosnia but was also very informative. I only did not agree on one statement, and that is the claim that, before the aggression, Bosnian Muslims, Catholics, and Orthodox citizens lived in tolerance and peace with each other. There have always been problems in this country and people have been treated unequally all the time because of their religious preference. Even now, after the war, there is hardly any improvement. Still, I would definitely recommend the book - great historic facts and easy to read and understand.

To much is focused on the divisions between the albanians, without much truth. There are also episodes mentioned which did not indeed happen (there has been no anti-greek violence in Sarande in 1992). It is old information and althopugh it is helpful, its' quite out of date on many topics.

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

Generally I stopped reading books on the Balkans and the former Yugoslavia written by passersby (or perhaps a better word would be "passers-through") a few years ago because they are largely uninformative and self-serving. The only reason I picked this one up is because I met and briefly spoke with the author in Zagreb in late 1992. He made a very favorable impression on me; I found him quite intelligent and likable, and was therefore interested in his account of his trips to the Balkans. I wish I hadn't bothered. "Only the Nails" differs little from books written by various superficial journalists, writers, poets and other "truth-seekers." It follows the general framework established by Robert Kaplan's inane "Balkan Ghosts" and continued in various forms by Peter Maass, Janine DiGiovanni, Martin Bell and scores of others. To his credit, Merrill faithfully reproduces the many conversations he held with friends and acquaintances in Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia, etc. and some of these are very interesting. However, this hardly makes up for the book's glaring shortcomings: from factual errors that riddle the entire book (e.g. the frequent misspelling of place-names, inaccurate dates or misplacing of events) to the author's forays into history which are often misleading (e.g. he says Serbia started both of the pre-WWI Balkans Wars, which is untrue; or Bulgaria only gained independence in 1908, again, not completely accurate). Much of this could have been corrected by less-indulgent editors and even the most perfunctory consultation of dictionaries, atlases, encyclopedias or the very sources cited in Merrill's bibliography - which he obviously read quite superficially. Also troubling was Merrill's tendency, at least in Croatia, to play the typical war tourist, getting some knowledgable locals to take him close to the frontlines so he could observe wartime destruction and its sorrowful victims (playing guide to ignorant and often obnoxious free-lance reporters and photographers is something in which I have quite a bit of experience). He even has the cheek to say he became "bored" with the (understandable) bitterness of his two Croatian guides, both of whom had first-hand experience of Croatia's bloody and now largely forgotten war in 1991. In fact, the motive for his frequent trips to Sarajevo go largely unexplained, except that the author at some level liked the rush of being in a city under siege (he indirectly admits this toward the end of the book). In the end, this book is just a mish-mash of the author's impressions, which offer little in the way of explaining anything, much less the underlying causes or motivations that led to the Third Balkan War.

The previous review, by someone who admits to not reading the book, should be wholly discounted. Although no current book on the Balkans can compete with Robert D. Kaplan's incomparable "Balkan Ghosts," Christopher Merrill eloquently describes the mood, psychology, and turmoil of the former Yugoslavia in the early 1990s. I only wish that the book were a bit heavier on the historical background. However, it is refreshing to read a more human account of the effects of post-modern progress than the usual detached historical rendering. Merrill's work is to be praised, an attitude which can only be adopted after actually reading the book.

Readers of Merrill's book will find it useful for making sense of the events in the former Yugoslavia -- a region with too much history for its own good. Anyone who questioned how neighbors could end up at opposite ends of a gun will find answers here. Merrill explores cultural history -- the stories and sentiments that bind a people despite the political borders -- as he seeks to answer for himself how such barbaric and senseless destruction could happen. This book offers insights rarely found in contemporary writings on the Balkans.