This enthralling and often chilling political travelogue fully
deciphers the Balkans' ancient passions and intractable hatreds for
outsiders. For as Kaplan travels among the vibrantly-adorned
churches and soul-destroying slums of the former Yugoslavia,
Albania, Romania, Bulgaria, and Greece, he allows us to see the
region's history as a time warp in which Slobodan Milosevic becomes
the reincarnation of a fourteenth-century Serbian martyr; Nicolae
Ceaucescu is called "Drac," or "the Devil"; and the one-time Soviet
Union turns out to be a continuation of the Ottoman Empire.