Balkan Ghosts: A Journey Through History [Paperback]

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 byThe 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 theBalkan Ghostsincludes 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.

In 1989, the Berlin Wall fell. That November, while the world danced in the rubble of the wall, a journalist named Robert Kaplan was in Kosovo watching a riot between ethnic Serbs and Albanians. The future, Kaplan wrote, was not in a reuniting Germany but in a fragmenting Yugoslavia. In Yugoslavia, Kaplan saw the impending collapse of nation states and the rise of a Hobbesian jungle of gang wars, tribal slaughter and ideological jihads. Kaplan, of course, was right. Porter J. Goss, Director of Central IntelligenceRobert D. Kaplan, a correspondent forThe Atlantic Monthly, is the author of more than a dozen books on travel and foreign affairs that have been translated into many languages. They includedEastward to Tartary: Travels in the Balkans, the Middle East, and the CaucasusandBalkan Ghosts: A Journey Through History.

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In 1989, the Berlin Wall fell. That November, while the world danced in the rubble of the wall, a journalist named Robert Kaplan was in Kosovo watching a riot between ethnic Serbs and Albanians. The future, Kaplan wrote, was not in a l£3