The Dalmatian Coast - October 3-10, 2009

The novel is a story of Ivan Dolinar, a Croatian Everyman born in the town of Nizograd in 1948. As a boy, Ivan is a bully and a patriot (as one chapter title puts it, "Ivan loves the state apparatus"), and he grows up longing to serve his country. After a buffoonish but successful stint in medical school, he's about to become a doctor when a foolish joke gets him arrested and sent to a labor camp on a desolate Adriatic island. He's released three years later, but his criminal record makes him unfit for everything except graduate school in philosophy. Demoralized and hapless, he's drafted into the Serb-heavy Yugoslav army to fight his fellow Croats; he soon deserts and is hustled into uniform on the other side. The story culminates with Ivan's first-person account of his own death and afterlife.

The collapse of former Yugoslavia and the ensuing war have shifted scholarly attention to its successor states. Malcolm's success consists in demonstrating why Bosnia-Hercegovina's distinctive history demands such an approach. The author cogently dispels the myths of forcible conversion to Islam by the Ottomans as well as the notion of a "fundamentalist threat" from an Islamic Bosnia. Although Malcolm is least comfortable in dealing with the segment of Bosnia's history as a part of Yugoslavia, he makes the case that its subsequent destruction was an object of "rational strategy" rather than religious hatred.

When Croatia declared itself an independent state in October 1991, the remnant of Yugoslavia reacted by invading and shelling towns such as Dubrovnik. Tanner was a correspondent in the Balkans from 1988 to 1993 for the London Independent and witnessed these events firsthand. His book covers the full recorded history of Croatia since the first Slav settlers in the seventh century A.D., but the period of World War II and after makes up half the work.

While only partially representing the Croatian way of life, which these days is increasingly urbanized and computerized, these personal (but never biased) essays fully encapsulate the country's essence. "The book gives a fascinating insight into not only the countryside, as you would expect from a book about travel, but also into the people and their attitudes, memorable images of the country, and to sketches and unhurried ruminations on its people, its landscapes, kitchens, cities, and coastlines. Filled with the colors and “feels” of Croatia, inhabited by faces commonly unseen, and accompanied by insightful reflections and comments, Croatia: Travels in Undiscovered Country is an informative and engaging book, and a highly gratifying guide into Croatia's “back-roads”, diverse natural beauties, and vanishing complex cultures.

From its settlement in the 7th century to its conquest by Napoleon at the beginning of the 19th, Dubrovnik repeatedly held a significant position beyond what could have been expected of this tiny city-state. But Dubrovnik also faced the extreme dangers posed by Venetian plotters, Ottoman aggressors, natural disasters and, finally, Napoleon. In modern times, the city survived the besieging Yugoslav army in 1991-92, which heavily damaged but did not destroy Dubrovnik's cultural heritage. This book is a comprehensive history of Dubrovnik's progress over twelve centuries of European development, encompassing arts, architecture, social and economic changes and the traumas of war and politics.

As this final installment in the Alexander the Great trilogy opens we find the general dying. Tracing the fifteen years after his death we see his mighty empire disintegrate.

This is a story of how extraordinary events can bring out the worst and the best in ordinary people. How the author, to keep himself sane in the turmoil, learns to see the funny side of things, to understand what makes people tick, to keep eyes open, and when the going gets really rough- to recite poetry He is raised in a non-practicing Jewish family, and at 12 years old the Germans occupy former Yugoslavia. His family hides in a small village and eventually joins Tito’s guerrilla. At 14 years of age he is appointed as a military courier, given an outdated Italian gun, and sent to roam alone through mountains, forests, and small villages of Croatia. After the war, just when things start to look better, his father breaks down under the Communist pressure and the author is forced to take refuge again.

The "bestiality" of what Glenny calls the Third Balkan War "springs the boundaries of moral comprehension," but our understanding of the Yugoslav civil war is aided by these two excellent works of reportage. They convey sensitively, vividly, and fairly completely the roots of this savage conflict. Glenny, a well-known British journalist; presents an insightful report, reflecting his travels through Yugoslavia's republics and providing a nuanced exploration of the country's collapse.

Hall, a freelance American journalist, was one of the last outsiders permitted to travel freely in Yugoslavia during the final days of its existence. From early May to mid-September 1991 he questioned members of the various Balkan "tribes" in Zagreb, Belgrade, Sarajevo and points in between, listening to comments on their history, prejudices, superstitions, fears, aspirations and opinions of other ethnic and national groups. He describes the last days of peaceful coexistence among Yugoslavia's religious and ethnic communities and delineates conflicts that would trigger the horrors of "ethnic cleansing" and war.