| 1. |  | The Zookeeper's Wife: A War Story
from W. W. Norton
Price: $10.17
Customer Review:
My sister gave me this book for Christmas, saying it was one of the best books she had read in some time. I was fascinated by her description, and started the book the next day. I finished it the next morning. I found it eminently readable and fascinating. I was a history major in college, and had... more info | 3.5 / 5.0
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| 2. |  | Under a Cruel Star: A Life in Prague 1941-1968
from Holmes & Meier Publishers
Price: $13.50
Customer Review:
An excellent book that is easy to read, you can easily get through it on a transatlantic flight or something similar.
I have one quibble - at one point in the book Heda Kovaly states to her son Ivan that his father Rudolf died "for his beliefs." Well, sadly I think the truth is that he died... more info | 5.0 / 5.0
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| 3. |  | The Cash Nexus: Economics And Politics From The Age Of Warfare Through The Age Of Welfare, 1700-2000
from Basic Books
Price: $16.76
Customer Review:
Ferguson writes another of his trademark power histories with a grand narrative and an attempt to scale the mighty themes.
The Cash Nexus, taken from Carlye's quote about money and political power, examines the paradigms of money and warfare in the modern world. He writes interestingly about... more info | 4.0 / 5.0
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| 4. |  | Natasha's Dance: A Cultural History of Russia
from Metropolitan Books
Customer Review:
Despite the author's ambivalent aversion to Slavophilism, he seemed to grasp the basics of Russian culture. This was not so much a review of Russian history--there are many of those--but how Russian culture incarnated in the Slavic lands.
Since other reviewers likely talked about the opening... more info | 4.5 / 5.0
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| 5. |  | The Magic Lantern: The Revolution of '89 Witnessed in Warsaw, Budapest, Berlin, and Prague
from Vintage
Price: $11.16
Customer Review:
An often eye-witness account of the democratic revolutions of 1989 in Poland, Hungary, East Germany and Czechoslovakia.
The writing is a little uneven but it provides an excellent inside account of exceptional historic events. Ash left me with a very strong sense of the contingent and uncertain... more info | 4.0 / 5.0
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| 6. |  | Safe Area Gorazde: The War in Eastern Bosnia 1992-1995
from Fantagraphics Books
Price: $13.57
Customer Review:
Politically sharp, an eye for the human side of modern day war zones, heart warming and breathtaking: Safe Area Gorazde is a must read. Sacco's other work 'Palestine' is also an absolute must read. Both very good journalistic accounts of real existing people in real existing desperate circumstances,... more info | 4.5 / 5.0
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| 7. |  | Zlata's Diary: A Child's Life in Wartime SarajevoRevised Edition
from Penguin (Non-Classics)
Price: $10.40
Customer Review:
Zlata's diary is a an autobiographical representation of a young teenage girl, called Zlata Filipovi, and the daily living conditions that she experienced preceding and during military conflict in Eastern Europe - Sarajevo. In the course of her writing, Zlata described the conversion of her... more info | 4.0 / 5.0
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| 8. |  | Balkan Ghosts: A Journey Through History
from Vintage
Customer Review:
Robert Kaplan's Balkan Ghosts is more than a travel book for most of his experiences in the Balkan's were far from tourism. Rather, like Rebecca West's Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, his book explores time and place with the precision of an anthropologist.
Kaplan points out that this area of the... more info | 3.5 / 5.0
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| 9. |  | Bury Me Standing: The Gypsies and Their Journey
from Vintage
Price: $10.17
Customer Review:
Gypsies (Roma) have a much more complicated cultural history that I expected, and author Isabel Fonseca spends periods of time over four years with a variety of Roma families and individuals. Fonseca captures daily living, history, social norms, traditions, and the yoke on Gypsy shoulders placed by... more info | 4.0 / 5.0
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| 10. |  | The Balkans: A Short History (Modern Library Chronicles)
from Modern Library
Price: $11.16
Customer Review:
For someone who's quite interested in the Balkans, I've started but failed to finish a distressing number of books on the topic. I though the problem is that the topic is too large for one book until I found Mark Mazower's The Balkans: A Concise History. In less than 250 pages Mazower covers not... more info | 3.5 / 5.0
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