La Vie En Rose for 2005 February 27

I finally finished reading it! I think it took me a while because it could have been a lot better written: it was repetitive in some sections, there were some simple fact checking that had not been done, it jumped around a lot chronologically with little explanation, and a lot of the military descriptions were dry and systematic, with lots of cities that weren't placed geographically, and no maps!

Also, while the book did a really good job of analyzing the Ottoman era and how this lead to a culture of violence and created territorial tensions that lead to the Balkan conflicts of the twentieth-century, the book basically stopped after the second Balkan war in 1913, only dealing with WWI, WWII, and the Balkan crisis of the 1990s in the epilogue. It was a great set-up with very little follow-through; I felt he could have done a lot more with exploring how the history of the region set-up the conflicts, and how they echoed in each other.

So yes, as predicted, I am now wanting to read The Balkan Wars II. I went through the bibliography and added a bunch of books to my wish list. I bet I can get most of them from the library, but I love to buy books from Amazon when they're el cheapo used but in good condition, because then they're MINE! Anyway, my birthday is two weeks from today!

But anyway, the thing I loved most about the book was the very end, in the last paragraph of the epilogue, when I was delighted and surprised to learn that the author, Andre Gerolymatos, eloquently espouses my own pet theory on how to establish peace in the Balkans:

Ultimately, the answer is not NATO occupation but economic peacekeeping, the integration of the region into the European Union. The blurring of frontiers will provide the political, economic, and social security needed for distinct and ancient communities to adjust their cultural, religious, and linguistic boundaries without fear of retaliation. Only then will national chauvinism and insecurity die a quiet death.