The Impossible Country: A Journey Through the Last Days of Yugoslavia

Mr. Hall presents an unbiased view of the people of late Yugoslavia, and mixes the history in with the people he has personal encounters with. This a good book to read if one wants to know about pre-Kosovo.

This is one of those books I couldn't put down. It's the travel book as political history, full of facts and landscape but dominated by characters, storytelling and superb writing. The story Brian Hall tells, as he travels among the peoples of a country about to dismember itself, is often surprisingly comic, but, of course, finally it is heartbreaking. If you read only one book on the recent and distant history of Yugoslavia--and if you wonder why the United States and many of its allies were (and are) willing to wage war with the Serbs--read this book. It's a true story, and it is written with the skill and passion of a great storyteller.