In High Albania, Victorian anthropologist and travel writer M (Mary) Edith Durham presents a vivid and fascinating insight into the culture, customs, people, and the lands of Northern Albania as it was in the early 20th century. Read more

Bloomsbury Edition. Read more

With updates from the author, specially commissioned maps, and 50 new images, this is a concise overview of the tragic conflict in former Yugoslavia and its significant consequences.In 1991, an ethnically diverse and peaceful region of Europe descended into violence, lawlessness, bitter hatred and chaos, almost overnight to the bewilderment of international observers. Communities fractured along lines of ethnic and religious affiliation, and the ensuing fighting was deeply personal, resulting in horrific brutality, rape, torture and genocide, causing the deaths of thousands of people. In this book, Alastair Finlan examines the internal upheavals of the former Yugoslavia and their international implications, including the failure of the Vance-Owen plan; the first use of NATO in a combat role and in peace enforcement; and the war in Kosovo, unsanctioned by the UN but prosecuted by NATO forces to prevent the ethnic cleansing of the region.Updated and revised, with full-colour maps and all new images throughout, this is an introduction to the brutal and bloody conflict in the former Yugoslavia, one of the greatest yet least understood tragedies of the 20th century. Read more

At the end of the twentieth century people spoke as if the Balkans had plagued Europe for ever. But two hundred years earlier, the Balkans did not exist. It was not the Balkans but the ¿Rumeli¿ that the Ottomans ruled, the formerly Roman lands they had conquered from Byzantium, together with their Christian inhabitants. In this original account of the region Mark Mazower dispels current Western clichés and replaces stereotypes with a vivid account of how mountains, empires and religions have shaped its inhabitants¿ lives. As a bridge between Europe and Asia it has been exposed to a constant incursion of nomadic peoples across the centuries. Mazower¿s narrative ranges broadly both in time and in space, treating the former Turkish domains in Europe as part of a common if complex historical inheritance. Read more

Drawing on a wide range of unpublished material and observations gathered from his visit to Yugoslavia in 1999, Michael Parenti challenges mainstream media coverage of the war, uncovering hidden agendas behind the Western talk of genocide, ethnic cleansing, and democracy. Read more

This history of the Serbs opens with the medieval kings of Serbia and a battle lost six centuries ago that still profoundly influences the Serbs. It then describes the idea of "Serbdom" and examines the tenuous ethnic balance fashioned by Tito and its drastic unravelling after his death. Read more

'A great achievement' Timothy Garton AshBloodshed. Invasions. Nationalist fervor. In this classic and celebrated history of the Balkans, Misha Glenny shows how the countries on the South-Eastern edge of Europe are seen by the rest of the world, and how the real story of the last 200 years is much more surprising. There are groups we think of as implacable enemies, who have, over the centuries, formed unlikely alliances, disrupting the idea that conflict in the Balkans is the inevitable product of ancient grudges. And there is the often-catastrophic relationship between the Balkans and the rest of Europe, a dark history that raises profound questions about Western intervention. From the region's turbulent nineteenth century to the recent brutal conflicts in Kosovo and Macedonia, the surge of organised crime, the rise of Turkey and the rocky road to EU membership, The Balkans remains the essential and peerless study of Europe's most complex and least understood region. 'An endeavour which deserves extraordinary admiration and as yet has no rival' Guardian'Glenny is the wisest and most reflective of all the Western journalists who have covered this part of Europe in the past two decades... This was an enormously ambitious book to undertake, but it is the book which Europe and America need' Observer Read more

The year 2012 marks the twentieth anniversary of the onset of the worst carnage to blight Europe since the reign of the Third Reich - the Bosnian War. A hurricane of violence was unleashed by Serbian President Slobodan Miloševic and his allies, the Bosnian Serbs, in pursuit of a 'Greater Serbia'. An infamous campaign of 'ethnic cleansing' demanded the annihilation of all Bosniaks, Croats and other peoples through either death or enforced deportation, with any trace of their existence destroyed. Such brutality was presided over and tolerated by the so-called 'International Community' including, perhaps most vividly in the popular memory, concentration and death camps in our lifetime. It was Vulliamy's accursed honour to reveal these camps to the world in August 1992, when he penetrated both Omarska and Trnopolje. The War is Dead, Long Live the War charts this discovery, but it is much more than a memoir: Vulliamy passionately bears witness to the Bosnian war's aftermath, revealing the human consequences as well as the trials and traumas of exile or homecoming. It is only now, through the eyes and memories of the survivors and the bereaved - and, in different ways, the perpetrators - that we can really understand the bloody catastrophe in Bosnia. The world moves on over twenty years, but in Bosnia, there has been no thaw in the hatred; no reckoning. The war may be over, but the war lives on. Read more

The only woman to serve as a soldier in the First World War, the Englishwoman Flora Sandes became a hero and media sensation when she fought for the Serbian Army and pursued a distinguished career in its ranks as officer. This account charts her incredible story, from her tomboyish childhood in genteel Victorian England, her mission to Serbia as a Red Cross volunteer and subsequent military enrolment, her celebrity lecture tours of Europe, her marriage to a fellow officer and her survival of a Gestapo prison during the Second World War to her final years in Suffolk. A fascinating character of her times and an inspiration to women the world over, Flora Sandes is brought to life and restored to her rightful place in history by this authorized biography - compiled with the help of her family, and using hitherto unused private papers and photographs. Read more

First World War diary of Ishobel Ross who served with the Scottish Women's Hospitals unit in Serbia. Trained as a cookery teacher in Edinburgh she went to hear Dr Elsie Inglis speak of the need for women volunteers in Serbia. Read more

From beloved international reporter Åsne Seierstad comes a remarkable exploration of the lives of ordinary Serbs under the regime of Slobodan Milosevic-during the dramatic events leading up to his fall, and finally in the troubled years that have followed. Seierstad traveled extensively through Serbia between 1999 and 2004, following the lives of people from across the political spectrum. Her moving and perceptive account follows nationalists, Titoists, Yugonostalgics, rock stars, fugitives, and poets. Seierstad brings her acclaimed attention to detail to bear on the lives of those whom she encounters in With Their Backs to the World , as she creates a kaleidoscopic portrait of a nation made up of so many different-and often conflicting-hopes, dreams, and points of view. Read more

Wars come and go across the headlines and television screens, but for those who survive them, scarred and scattered, they never end. This is a book about post-conflict irresolution, about the lives of those who survived the gulag of concentration camps in north-western Bosnia and about seeking justice for Bosnia today.But justice is not Reckoning. The book finds that the survivors are lost not only geographically, but in history – betrayed in war, and also in peace. Read more

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 often chilling political travelogue is already a modern classic. This new edition of the Balkan Ghosts includes six opinion pieces written by Robert Kaplan about the Balkans between 1996 and 2000 beginning just after the implementation of the Dayton Peace Accords and ending after the conclusion of the Kosovo war, with the removal of Slobodan Milosevic from power. Read more

A detailed and absorbing narrative of the campaigns fought on the 'forgotten' Eastern Front of the Great War, vividly illustrating that these campaigns were no less costly, tragic and important than the catastrophes of the Somme, Verdun and Passchendaele.The massive offensives on the Eastern Front during 1915 are too often overshadowed by the events in Western Europe, but the scale and ferocity of the clashes between Imperial Germany, Habsburg Austria-Hungary and Tsarist Russia were greater than anything seen on the Western Front and ultimately as important to the final outcome of the war.With the Russians hamstrung by weak supply lines and the Austro-Hungarian leadership committed to a strategy of offensive drives despite diminishing manpower and adverse terrain, the fighting in early 1915 was a costly and futile exercise. By the summer, the Central Powers, increasingly dominated by Germany, had begun to gain the advantage, but even the Gorlice–Tarnów Offensive of 1915 – which ultimately resulted in the retreat of Russian forces from Poland – failed to bring the conflict to a conclusion. Now with the work of internationally renowned Eastern Front expert Prit Buttar, this fascinating story is finally being told. From the bitter fighting in the Carpathian Mountains, to the sweeping advances through Serbia and the almost medieval battle for the fortress of Przemysl, this is a staggeringly ambitious history of some of the most important moments of the First World War. Read more

Belgrade sits above the confluence of two great rivers, the Sava and Danube. It has been home to many civilizations: Celts, Romans, Byzantines, Bulgars, Magyars, Ottomans and Serbs. Frequently attacked and destroyed, it has been rebuilt many times, on each occasion a new city taking the place of the old. A Turkish fortress, the focus for a Serbian principality, an intellectual and artistic centre, the city grew until it became capital of Yugoslavia. Poised between East and West, bridging and dividing them, it is decorated with a rich architectural mix: traditional Balkan styles, European baroque influences, the results of socialist planning, contemporary innovations and design. Now it is one of the largest cities in south-eastern Europe and capital of the Republic of Serbia. Despite many challenges, Belgrade has resisted assimilation and created a unique cultural identity out of its many contrasting sides, sometimes with surprising consequences. CITY OF CONFLICT: invaded, occupied and damaged in many wars; the scene of power struggles between the Ottoman and Habsburg empires, German and Soviet armies and the NATO alliance; a central point in the tumultuous history of the Balkans. CITY OF CONTRASTS: Islam and Christianity, traditional Balkan styles, old-style kafanas and the modernity of New Belgrade; an ambiguous relationship with its troubled past, traces of which remain in hidden corners only to emerge like ghosts. CITY OF LITERATURE AND FILM: the emergence of a distinctive Serbian literature; epic poetry and modern fiction; the cinema of war and urban alienation. Read more

"Kosovo: War & Revenge" explains how Kosovo became the crucible of one of the century's most pernicious conflicts: how Serbs and Albanians, sharing this tiny corner of Europe, became locked into a ferocious cycle of domination and revenge. It shows how the conflict that began here led not only to the destruction of the old Yugoslavia, but to a war waged by the world's most powerful military alliance. The book sets the conflict in its full historical context. It analyzes the character and career of Slobodan Milosevic and explains how Kosovo provided the springboard for him to mobilize the Serbs and seize supreme power. It reveals the great lost opportunity of the February 1999 Rambouillet conference for peace and compromise in the southern Balkans. It explains how exiled Kosovar militants could take their war from Swiss cafes to the mountains of northern Albania. And it examines how and why NATO launched its first ever war - a 78-day campaign of high-tech air strikes against Serbia - believing the onslaught would be over in days. Based on research, eyewitness reports and interviews with the leading protagonists, Judah's book presents a detailed account of the origins of the Serb-Albanian conflict, the course of the war, involvement of the Western powers, the implications for the global strategic landscape, and the options for the future. Read more