The most comprehensive narrative history of Bosnia available in English
This updated edition of Noel Malcolms highly-acclaimed Bosnia: A Short History provides the reader with the most comprehensive narrative history of Bosnia in the English language. Malcolm examines the different religious and ethnic inhabitants of Bosnia, a land of vast cultural upheaval where the empires of Rome, Charlemagne, the Ottomans, and the Austro-Hungarians overlapped. Clarifying the various myths that have clouded the modern understanding of Bosnias past, Malcolm brings to light the true causes of the countrys destruction. This expanded edition of Bosnia includes a new epilogue by the author examining the failed Vance-Owen peace plan, the tenuous resolution of the Dayton Accords, and the efforts of the United Nations to keep the uneasy peace.
What went wrong in the country where Christians and Muslims mingled and tolerated each other for over five centuries? It was a land with a vibrant political and cultural history, unlike any other in Europe, where great powers and religions-the empires of Rome, Charlemagne, the Ottomans; the faiths of Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Judaism, and Islam overlapped and combined. In this first English-language history of Bosnia, Noel Malcolm provides a narrative chronicle of the country from its beginnings to its tragic end. Clarifying the various myths that have clouded the modern understanding of Bosnias past, Malcolm brings to light the true causes of the countrys destruction: the political strategy of the Serbian leadership, the conflict between the city and the countryside, the fatal inaction and miscalculations of Western politicians.
Putting the Bosnia war into perspective, this volume celebrates the complex history of a country whose past, as well as its future, has been all but erased. At last, here is the guide for the general reader seeking a comprehensive and accessible account of the war in the former Yugoslavia.
NOEL MALCOLM, author of the widely acclaimed Bosnia: A Short History (also available from NYU Press), has been described by The New York Times as "President Clintons favorite Balkans expert."
"An acute, readable introduction to why and how racial history has been the bane of the Balkans and why it need not be." -Village Voice Literary Supplement
"Quite simply one of the best books of historical scholarship written for a general audience in the last decade." -New York Newsday
"By far the best available guide to the fatal steps to catastrophe ... Thoughtful, lucid, and deeply informed." -New York Review of Books
"An extraordinary book--the best available in English on the background of the Bosnian war." -Warren Zimmermann,former U.S. ambassador to Yugoslavia, in the National Interest
"This book is essential for anyone to understand the present conflict ...a splendid work of synthesis on a very complex subject, written with insight and sympathy: the best, indeed the only informed book on a history that has become both topical and tragic." -Sunday Telegraph
