Rating: 
Summary: Short Blurp
Review: Balkan Ghosts is a joy to read. It is well developed, insightful, and extremely well written. The book seems at first difficult to read, as it jumps from scene to scene, but the chaos of the writting works wonderfully in developing some kind of understanding of the nature of the region. The book is emotional, yet blunt; and hides behind nothing. Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful Wonderful Wonderful
Review: I'm not eloquent enough to say what a great book Balkan Ghosts is. It can be read either as a travelouge from begining to end, or in whatever section you're interested in. I've done both. Chapters like "The Danube's Bitter End," "Just to Go the Heaven," and descriptions such as that of Salonika make those places real.(For those interested in what's in the news, Kosovo is also mentioned, with the author's thoughts on the troubles plauging that region. It was written before the war and doesn't show its age.) Buy this book. It is a great way to understand the region, much easier to get into than Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, and a wonderful compliment to true histories of the area (such as A HISTORY OF THE BALKANS, THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE, and THE EMERGANCE OF MODERN TURKEY.)
Rating: 
Summary: Truly Surprised
Review: I loved Mr. Kaplan's work - it was amasing. I was born and raised in Bulgaria, and I've never met a Western who tried his best (and almost succeeded) to understand the rich cultural heritage of the Balkan peoples, the reasons why we fight and hate each other. Mr. Kaplan's style is fabulous...you can see the proud mountains, the dark people, the beautifull churches. I don't agree with his point in presenting Orthodox Christianity as a fanatic religion, or it would be better to say - Orthodox Christians as fanatic followers...But as a whole the book provides the reader with a great deal of true facts, and I must say that Mr. Kaplan succeeded in understanding the passions ruling this place, a frightfull mix-up of races, who live together without mingling.. I would like to thank Mr. Kaplan for doing such a GREAT work in presenting our history and our habits. Thank you. Yours: A full-blooded Bulgarian
Rating:
Summary: Read and re-read this book.
Review: I spent most of 1997 in Bavaria on assignment. Prior to leaving I had read a work of fiction set in the later years of WWII. The book was "The Painted Bird". I found it's lurid descriptions of the utter degeneracy and inhumanity of "the Balkans" deeply disturbing. Yes, there were questions as to the authenticity of "The Painted Bird" and the author's motives and veracity were tainted as a result. While living in Bavaria I read and re-read Balkan Ghosts. Robert Kaplan is a superb writer. I literally could not put this book down. While there, the Bosnian tragedy continued apace while Albania imploded to the east with dire warnings all around of flotillas of Albanian refugees swamping Greece and Italy. By the way, the Greeks and the Italians have more experience in dealing with these issues than we have. By mid-1997 there was no Government in Albania and the Abanians were rioting and destroying what little vestige of national infrastructure that existed previously. Sporadic warfare along the borders with Kosovo and Montenegro threatened to erupt into open warfare. And the Albanians want to govern Kosovo! And the Kosovars-the ethnic Albanians at least- seem to think that would be a good thing. Thanks to our latest adventure, Operation Allied Force (OAF being the most ironic acronym to date), Kosovo is now every bit as primitive and devastated as Albania. So much for nation building courtesy of NATO and the UN. There is and should be compassion for the lot of others in the wake of earthquakes, famines, and floods etc., but what is happening in the Balkans should largely be ignored. I am not convinced that we will have the will or the stamina to remain in the Balkans for several generations. I see little evidence that our presence there will be anything but a delaying of the inevitable. When we do leave, the butchery will begin anew. Tito's Yugoslavia effectively banked the flames at least for the forty odd years of his regime through systematic repression and terror. But, Tito's Police State failed to extinguish those flames. Passionate ethnic and religious hatred and a universal desire for revenge are the only common elements in the Balkans. Try to unite a region under those principles. Let it go. For reasons too deeply ingrained and complex to resolve the Balkans are hell bent to self destruct and nothing the west can offer or do will serve to deter that agenda. In the end, left to their own devices, the peoples of the Balkans will be reduced to employing sticks and spears. Maybe that is the best outcome. Jerry Furland, author of "Transfer-the end of the beginning..."
Rating: 
Summary: Read It, But With a Grain of Salt
Review: Robert Kaplan's "Balkan Ghosts" is a flawed book, but certainly worth reading in order to understand, if nothing else, the prevailing Western attitudes towards the Balkan region of Europe. The books clear strength lies in the author's lucid, fluid and descriptive writing style - it truly makes the book, from the literary point of view, a joy to read. The reader is given a vivid picture of the Balkan lands Kaplan visits in a sort of 'travelogue from hell' or 'anti-travelogue' regarding places that most readers will not yet have visited. Added to this is a good deal of insight and reportage, interviews with locals, and so forth, that lend the book much readability and depth. Unfortunately, however, the book is marred by the author's own Western prejudices and biases. What we have here is a critique, in many ways, of the 'backwards East' and a not-so-subtle head-shaking that the region is not more 'Western' in outlook. The problems surface on two levels: First, Kaplan's descriptions of the local cultural life are off the mark, due in many cases to his lack of understanding of Orthodox Christianity. Many ignorant comments are notable regarding Orthodox religious art, piety, liturgical life, church organization, etc. Kaplan is right that the Orthodox tradition has had a profound influence on the region, but his conclusions as to the nature of this impact are nothing more than a perpetuation of the common and long-held Western stereotypes about the Eastern Orthodox part of Europe - in particular, the myth that Eastern Orthodox Christianity is a dangerous brew of mysticism, austerity and nationalism. Not only is this an incorrect summary, but the impressionistic conclusion is false -- the reality of the impact of the Orthodox Church on these countries in the twentieth century is much more complex and nuanced than Mr. Kaplan leads the reader to believe. Kaplan would have been better served to study more about Orthodox Christianity before repeating so many tired stereotypes about it in this book. But, alas, many Western readers are not in a position to correct Mr. Kaplan, and will accept what he writes as true, thereby experiencing a convenient confirmation of their existing stereotypes. Second, Kaplan's 'program' for the region is unabashedly biased towards the 'enlightened' Western approach. According to Kaplan, the post-Enlightenment West is the paradigm that the world (or at least this part of it) must follow, and he accords much of the problems of these countries to their non-Western, Byzantine, Slavic, Eastern Orthodox Christian background - in a vast, vast overstatement and oversimplification of the real situation in the Balkans and in Europe in general. The fact that the Enlightenment itself led to the drastic decline of ethical life in the 'West', and the development of the political ideologies that are the real cause of the tragedies of the Twentieth Century seems lost on Kaplan, who would solve the problems of the Balkan region by imposing the full-blown developments of Western Enlightenment ideology on these Southeastern Europeans. The story of the Balkans is simple enough - it is a region that has been 'put upon' by outsiders for centuries, each with their own designs for the region - the Venetians, the Byzantines, the Ottomans, the Austrians, the Nazis, etc. In the act of being downtrodden, rivalries developed and these have in some cases developed into ethnic hatreds. These hatreds are easily manipulable by local political powers to engage the population in one or another act of internal or external agression (read: scapegoating). The influence of outsiders on the region has been profoundly negative historically, and in my opinion, Kaplan is mistaken to assume that yet another 'design' for the region would meet with any greater success than the previous ones have. Read 'Balkan Ghosts' for a great travelogue and an excellent portrayal of the present Western stereotypical view of the Balkans. But don't take his strereotypes to heart - the truth is much more complex and nuanced, and the region needs to be understood from the 'inside out' rather than the view from the 'outside in' that Kaplan presents here.
Rating:
Summary: Good journalism makes everybody mad
Review: I'm pleased that so many people take exception to this book. Good journalism is always biased: a writer is not an automaton, but a real person who brings his own belief system to the work at hand. Not surprisingly, this annoys a lot of people. Tough. The journalist has as much right to his opinion as the reviewer has to his. Let's face it: we're all biased. We all think 'unbiased' means 'the writer sees things exactly as I do'. We also all tend to conveniently ignore facts which don't fit in our view of things. The Serb ignores reports of Kosovar women nailed to barn walls and gang-raped to death; the Kosovar ignores reports of entire Serb villages massacred and plowed under. Extreme examples, but on a smaller scale we are *all like that*. The point is, condemning a reporter for being biased is the pot calling the kettle black. If we weren't biased, we wouldn't write reviews.
Rating:
Summary: A good place to start
Review: I used Balkan Ghost as a primer for my upcoming six month deployment to Kosovo. Kaplan's insights are intriguing but the Balkan's are too rich and complex for one book to fulfill my curiosity. I think I'll try Rebecca West's Black Lamb and Grey Falcon next.
Rating:
Summary: A great piece of journalism
Review: This is a wonderful book. It describes the author's journey through Eastern Europe, the people he met, the historic sites he visited and what the sites mean. Some disgruntled reviewers here complain that the author is biased and gives a silly account of history. This is not a history book. Mr. Kaplan is a journalist and a very good one too. He tells the reader WHAT HE SAW and how it looked like. Being from Eastern Europe myself, I find his descriptions of places and certain characters very accurate. So I trust him on the part that I knew little about. Mr. Kaplan's statements didn't seem biased to me at all. In fact, I can relate to most of his feelings. The critics should at least acknowledge Mr. Kaplan's personal contribution to this work. He hitched through a very un-Western area, alone trying to talk to people and absorb what he saw. What was there about his condescending bias?...
Rating:
Summary: Unbeatable guide
Review: After completing a two month journey through the Balkans, I came to the conclusion that nothing had helped me more to get my feet wet than Robert Kaplan's Balkan Ghosts. His insight into one of the most fascinating parts of the world was the best starting pont to understand it. Not suprisingly, many of the people I talked to in Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, Kosovo or Croatia, seemd to echo Kaplan's descriptions. I disagree with those who criticize his bias, for overstating the obvious: It is a very subjective book, but it's impossible to come out of the Balkans with an objective impression (perhaps its only sin is to downplay testimonies from Serbian people). The hatred, specially in the former Yugoslavia, is indeed ancient, not just modern inventions to justify a war, and precisely because they are ancient, they remain strong and unwilling to surrender to dialogue and understanding, and that is exactly what gives value to Kaplan's book: it is able to decode the moods in the Balkans.
Rating:
Summary: I doubt if he can go beyond his own bias
Review: I read the book a few years ago. The style is very captivanting and I found many bits of interesting history. Still, I was furious about some of his conclusions which made me wonder whether he can beyond the ``Balkan'' connotation. Balkan people are not all obsessively anti-semitic as one is dangerously left to believe. I know, for a long, long time, many of the people and sites he's seen and I was outraged by some of his conclusions. I strongly disagree with most of his conclusions about the Romanian college students and with his value judgements about current life. The system of values in that part of the world is not identical to the Western system, and this does not make it better or worse. I personally know that some of people who got ``good grades'' in his book sold him a nice flashy package and I wondered whether he even bothered to check what's inside. And then I wondered about the people he interviewed and whom I haven't met. Are they really the way they are presented? I was left feeling dark, and I know there's a lot of soul out there.
|
