I liked this book, though it did have it's limits. Short histories by their nature mean there is less there to fully back up claims, and there was a lot I would have liked to seen more evidence for. The book touches on a lot on the region, but doesn't go before the Ottoman empire. Mazower describes life under the Ottomans as not that bad, and does not try to untangle the thorny knot of every country's history. He does a good job explaining how world powers, like the Hapsburgs and the Romanovs used the region as a lever against the Ottomans. I thought it was a little light on Albanian history, but was otherwise fair to the other areas of the Balkans. It was written in the early 2000s though, and I would love an updated version. While flawed, a book like this can really help a reader begin to get a more comprehensive with the unfamiliar history of the Balkans.
