Kosovo: A Short History

A well-researched book, definitely the most extensive book on Kosovo's history. It covers Kosovo's history since the time immemorial with little attention to the conflict 1998-1999, while Tim Judah's Kosovo: War and Revenge is more focused on this conflict. The only shortcoming of this book is pro-Albanian bias to some extent, yet the book is far from being utterly one-sided and he also debunks some Albanian historical myths.

This is essentially a politically motivated book written to help lay the 'intellectual' foundation for the U.S. and European support of Albanian separatists in southern Serbia and, ultimatley, the NATO bombing of Serbia itself in 1999. As the book has little historical value, due to it's extreme anti-Serb bias, it is only useful to students of modern-day propaganda.

It is curious that Malcolm has only written two 'short histories' on the areas of former Yurgoslavia: one on Bosnia, a former Yugoslav republic and one on Kosovo, a province of southern Serbia. Why no books on the other former republics? e.g. Slovenia, Macedonia, Croatia, Serbia, etc. Or is it not worth his time if there is no potential dispute with the Serbs?

I found this book very interesting to read, it explains well and gives one a better comprehension of the Balkans.

Extremely good knowledge of history of the Balkans, Noel does it by masterly knitting pieces of history together. I enjoyed reading it, due to the fact that many of things written inthe book are also told by my grand father. I prefer the book to all of those interested in knowing the roots of conflicts in the Balkans.

Andrei Stefanovski
Sofia, Bulgaria

Seems everyone jumps on the bandwagon to bash the serbs ...
Serbs are full of myths ... I guess serbs are just imagining
all those 200 some medieval churches ... and they are imagining
that they have been systematically harrassed and persecuted
in kosovo so that there are hardly any serbs left there . The
gullible serbs must be fed a good diet of lies by their leaders .Yeah , that's it .

Listen people , my grandfather left kosovo because they kept
waving a knife in his face . Literally . Every serb knows what
happened in kosovo . We don't need anybody to tell us . The history of serbs in kosovo and in bosnia and in krajina is a history of suffering . And here we are defeated and suffering again ... and we don't care , we will always fight
for what is right , you can't do anything to stop us . You can bombard us with a 1000 books to try to feed us the lies and garbage , it won't do you any good ; we won't go away .

As far as the book itself is concerned , nothing more needs to be said than hasn't already been said . You can't call this a history book of kosovo ; because it is not taking into account everyone's point of view , only the point of view of one side . I have never heard of such a history book . Has anyone else ?