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Realm of the Black Mountain: A History of Montenegro By Elizabeth Roberts Cornell University Press (2007), 521 pp. Reviewed by Christopher Deliso Although released just in 2007, Realm of the Black Mountain: A History of Montenegro comes from a much older school of scholarship. With this much needed work, former diplomat Elizabeth Roberts has produced [...]

Macedonian: A Course for Beginning and Intermediate Students By Christina E. Kramer University of Wisconsin Press, 2nd edition (2003), 530 pp., some illustrations Reviewed by Christopher Deliso The year 2008 was declared the ‘Year of the Macedonian language’ by the government in Skopje, a proclamation that has been echoed by the far-flung Macedonian diaspora in [...]

Mani: Travels in the Southern Peloponnese By Patrick Leigh Fermor John Murray, London (2004) 320 pp. Reviewed by Christopher Deliso 2008 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the original publication of Patrick Leigh Fermor’s Mani: Travels in the Southern Peloponnese, considered one of the most important travelogues of the 20th century by many critics. Although the [...]

A Nation at Bay: What an American Woman Saw and Did in Suffering Serbia By Ruth S. Farnam, over 30 B/W photos Bobbs-Merrill Co. (1918), 229 pp. Reviewed by Christopher Deliso This remarkable first-hand account of the First World War in the Balkans, available infrequently and only in its original 1918 printing, is the passionately [...]

Byzantium’s Balkan Frontier: A Political Study of the Northern Balkans, 900-1204 by Paul Stephenson Cambridge University Press (2000), 352 pp., 22 maps and tables Reviewed by Christopher Deliso This is one of the most important contemporary books for the history of the Byzantine Balkans. It creates a thoroughly new picture of the social, economic and [...]

Unholy Terror: Bosnia, Al-Qa’ida, and the Rise of Global Jihad By John R. Schindler Zenith Press (2007), 368 pp. Reviewed by Christopher Deliso Note: Owing to length, the following review is being published in two parts. Part one appeared on March 22, 2008. Part two (March 29, 2008) appears below. Deception and Deceit: The Media [...]

Unholy Terror: Bosnia, Al-Qa’ida, and the Rise of Global Jihad By John R. Schindler Zenith Press (2007), 368 pp. Reviewed by Christopher Deliso Note: Owing to length, the following review is being published in two parts. Part one, which follows below, appears on March 22, 2008. Part two will appear on March 29, 2008. Unholy [...]

The Falcon and the Eagle: Montenegro and Austria-Hungary, 1908-1914 By John D. Treadway Purdue University Press (1983), 349 pp. Reviewed by Christopher Deliso In the preface to this helpful study of Montenegrin diplomacy in the pre-WWI era, author John D. Treadway cites Greek-Canadian historian L.S. Stavrianos: “the role of Montenegro in South Slav and general [...]

By Jason Miko Whoever would have believed it? If you had been in the center of Ohrid town on Saturday morning, July 15, walking past the coffee bar Slavica, you would have noticed — if you could have even recognized them — the members of Roxy Music: Bryan Ferry, Andy Mackay and (session musician) Guy [...]

Our Man in Yugoslavia: The Story of a Secret Service Operative By Sebastian Richie Routledge (2004), 191 pp., 15 contemporary photos, 3 maps Reviewed by Christopher Deliso Our Man in Yugoslavia: The Story of a Secret Service Operative is not only the intriguing and likeable account, for the first time, of the adventures of the [...]