Travels through the Balkans, the Middle East & the Caucasus

 

Mint condition. PB. 364pp. $20 including postage anywhere in Australia.

Eastward to Tartary, Robert Kaplan's first book to focus on a single region since his bestselling Balkan Ghosts, introduces readers to an explosive and little-known part of the world destined to become a tinderbox of the future.

Kaplan takes us on a spellbinding journey into the heart of a volatile region, stretching from Hungary and Romania to the far shores of the oil-rich Caspian Sea. 

Through dramatic stories of unforgettable characters, Kaplan illuminates the tragic history of this unstable area that he describes as the new fault line between East and West. 

He ventures from Turkey, Syria, and Israel to the turbulent countries of the Caucasus, from the newly rich city of Baku to the deserts of Turkmenistan and the killing fields of Armenia. 

The result is must reading for anyone concerned about the state of our world in the decades to come.

An anthology of profiles by a leading Australian journalist

 

Excellent condition. PB. 296pp. $20 including postage anywhere in Australia.

The Whites of Their Eyes is a compelling anthology of twenty-two profiles. From Richard Carleton to Alan Jones, Mary Fairfax to Andrew Denton, Rose Hancock to Xena, Warrior Princess, Leser takes us on a roadshow into the psyche of some of our most remarkable personalities.

Using a combination of impeccable research, fearless interrogation, an acute eye for the detail and a deft touch with the pen, Leser has drawn profiles of characters who are in turns triumphant, tragic, brilliant, fatally flawed, courageous and compassionate.

About the author

David Leser is one of Australia's leading profile writers. His profiles have appeared in HQ Magazine and more recently in Good Weekend.

SOLD Sex, marriage and the Church

 

SOLD

Excellent conditions. PB. 160pp. $15 including postage anywhere in Australia.

A short history of Kosovo

 

Good condition. Slight bends in cover. PB. 528pp. $20 including postage anywhere in Australia.

Kosovo, a 55-mile-long plateau south of Serbia bordering Albania & Macedonia, should by all rights be a historical & political backwater. A Bulgarian geographer who visited Kosovo during WWI remarked it was "almost as unknown & inaccessible as a stretch of land in Central Africa." The observation would prove ironically fitting by the '90s, as Central Africa & Kosovo both became sites of widespread genocide, fueled by ethnic hatreds, of the deepest international significance. 

Noel Malcolm, British historian & journalist who's written extensively about the Balkans (including a companion volume of sorts on Bosnia), provides an overview of Kosovo's long-standing cultural divisions in his "short history" (although, at more than 500 pages, a not so short book). 

Readers following the unfolding war in Kosovo thru newspaper & tv coverage may well ask why ethnic Albanians & Serbs are struggling so violently to command the small region. 

Kosovo, he explains, is the birthplace of Serbian nationalism; the defeat of Serbian forces there in 1389 by Turkish troops became emblematic of the fall of the Serbian empire, as it led to Turkish domination of the Balkans. 

Contemporary warriors of Serbia are evidently attempting to reverse the course of history by reclaiming the land from its Turkish conquerors--but in the absence of the Turks, they'll take it from the Albanians (the largest ethnic group among Kosovo's inhabitants) whose ancestors converted to Islam when Turks ruled the region. 

His lucid text shows again & again that the ethnic conflict in Kosovo is less a battle over bloodlines & religion than it's one over differing conceptions of national origins & history. 

"When ordinary Serbs learn to think more rationally & humanely about Kosovo, & more critically about some of their national myths," he concludes, "all the people of Kosovo & Serbia will benefit--not least the Serbs themselves."