http://en.internationalepolitik.de/archiv/2007/spring2007/making-sense-of-the-ba...

Berlin-based American journalist Elizabeth Pond, in her survey of the Balkans and EU integration, considers not only the former Yugoslavia (sans Slovenia) but also its neighborhood in her excellent survey of the state of scholarship on the entire region since the fall of communism. She has carefully sifted through the best political analyses available and pulled them together country by country: Romania, Bulgaria, Kosovo, Croatia, Bosnia, Macedonia, Albania, Serbia, and Montenegro. In each case she looks at the very country-specific problems of nation- and state-building, and the prospects for sustainable stability in the Euro-Atlantic context.

Pond’s book would make an excellent introduction to the region for, say, a newly-appointed international official or an interested student. Its one weakness is that, while the regional perspective is lucidly presented, there is rather less about the real policy debates in European capitals and between the two sides of the Atlantic. ( )