Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Kaplan's book is very is extremely well-written, and easy to read. It's also easy to get drawn into the author's narrative and take everything he says as given. However, Kaplan is not as well-informed on his subject (basically the entire Balkan peninsula) as he thinks he is. With the exception of Greece, where he spent a lot of time, and perhaps Bulgaria, he doesn't know a whole lot about the region and fills in the gaps in his knowledge with stereotypes drawn from other authors or by transposing the opinions a few people he talked to onto entire populations--often giving distorted impressions of e.g. the Serbs, Croats or Romanians. Nothing is more indicative of Kaplan's essentially unscholarly approach to such a complex topic than the reading materials he says he used to prepare himself for his journeys: for Yugoslavia he depends on Rebecca West's pre-World War II travelogue "Black Lamb and the Grey Falcon," a biased book itself, and based on her rather short (3-4 week) sojourn in Yugoslavia; even more troubling is his use of Bram Stoker's "Dracula" as a guide for Romania. Stoker was never in Romania (or rather Transylvania) nor did he ever intend his book to be taken as an accurate view of southeastern Europe; he was simply trying to provide some atmosphere for his novel, and his portrayal of Transylvania draws heavily on Victorian-era prejudices about the Balkans as an eerie and savage place. Yet Kaplan repeatedly cites Stoker as though he is a legitimate authority on Romania. This is, to say the least, irresponsible. As other reviewers on this page noted, the most disturbing thing is that this book's popularity ensured that it helped formulate opinions among broad sections of the public, including policy-makers.