Balkan Ghosts is one of those books you read so much about you might get a feeling you no longer need to read it because you already know it through and through from all the reviews and critiques.
It has also been dismantled over and over by generations of scholars and policy wonks. The ancient hatreds thesis, which holds that Yugoslavia disintegrated in war because its constituent peoples have always hated and killed each other, has become a trope of explaining the place. Kaplan’s portrayal of the relations among the peoples of former Yugoslavia created “the sense that nothing could be done by outsiders in a region so steeped in ancient hatreds” (Richard Holbrooke). Published in 1993, this account of Kaplan’s travels through Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia, and Serbia in the late 1980s and 1990 purportedly influenced President Clinton’s policy in the region during the wars of Yugoslav dissolution. Abi Williams, President of The Hague Institute, and be followed by a contribution from Hans van Baalen, MEP and president of the ALDE Party, and a moderated discussion with the audience.Few travel books have had as big a real-world impact as Balkan Ghosts: A Journey Through History by Robert Kaplan.
The lecture was preceded by welcome remarks from Dr. In Europe’s Shadow is the story of an ideological and geographic frontier-and the book you must read in order to truly understand the crisis with Russia, and within Europe itself. Upon his return to Romania in 20, Kaplan found the country transformed yet again-now a traveler’s destination shaped by Western tastes, yet still emerging from the long shadows of Hitler and Stalin. Kaplan illuminates the fusion of the Latin West and the Greek East that created Romania, a country he visited for the first time in the 1970s. In Europe’s Shadow is a riveting journey through Romania, one of Europe’s frontier countries-and a potent examination of the forces that will determine Europe’s fate in the postmodern age. He is a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security and a contributing editor at The Atlantic, where his work has appeared for three decades.
Kaplan is the bestselling author of 16 books on foreign affairs and travel that have been translated into many languages, including Asia’s Cauldron, The Revenge of Geography, Monsoon, The Coming Anarchy, and Balkan Ghosts. The ALDE Group in European Parliament, The European Network of the VVD, and VVD International in cooperation with The Hague Institute for Global Justice and publisher Unieboek|Het Spectrum was pleased to host Author Robert Kaplan for a discussion on his forthcoming book, In Europe’s Shadow.
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