|
13 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The single best book on the subject, 9 May 2000
By A Customer
Malcolm's _Short History_ is a work of original scholarship, based on original archival research. In addition to sifting through the archives, he also appears to have read virtually everything worth reading that has been published on this subject in some twenty languages. Malcolm's work is addressed to the educated general reader, but is surprisingly accessible. It is clearly organised and he writes in an eminently readable, at times even elegant prose style of a sort we rarely encounter among academic authors these days. For a very long book (the subtitle is indeed a misnomer) this makes for surprisingly good reading -- sometimes the author's quest to work through the tangle of sources and contradictory claims to get at the root of what really happened at some key juncture carries the reader along with all the excitment of a good historical detective story. At times, however, even an interested reader may find himself wishing that Malcolm, or his editor, had exercised a bit more restraint by not following every historiographic controversy down every speculative blind alley. There are parts of the book that some readers will want to skim over lightly. But on the whole, this is a book that well repays the effort. Aside from managing to make sense of a complex region and its history over more than a millennium, Malcolm's greatest achievement is the way he punctures many of the historical myths and illusions dear to Balkan nationalists, both Serbs and Albanians. By doing so, he will no doubt give offense to those determined to hold fast to their patriotic illusions about the past in the face of compelling evidence to the contrary. But, unlike his critics, Malcolm has done his research and has read the original sources, and no one to my knowledge has so far been able to demonstrate that he has missed or misrepresented the sources in any significant instance. Those who wish to understand Kosovo and the Balkans, which are not likely to fade from our front pages anytime soon, cannot do so without some grasp of the historical issues that form the background to the region's troubled present. There are many books on Kosovo these days, most of them written by journalists on sabbatical or by political analysts. All of them begin with the obligatory gallop through the centuries "to set the scene" -- and all of them get bogged down in the same set of shopworn clichés and wind up making a hash of it. The reason is that most have never read anything serious on the subject. Rebecca West's magnum opus, _Black Lamb and Gray Falcon_, which many of these writers quote but few have ever read all the way through, is at times immensely entertaining, but is not in any sense a serious work of history. They should've picked up Malcolm's book instead. Noel Malcolm's _Kosovo: A Short History_ may not be short, but it is quite simply the only history of Kosovo in English that is worth reading.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you?
 
|
|
|
|
by Noel Malcolm
by T Judah
by Tim Judah
by Misha Glenny
by Gail Warrander
