History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)

Book Description

Recorded history is a finely-woven magic fabric of intricate lies about events predating the sixteenth century. There is not a single piece of evidence that can be reliably and independently traced back earlier than the eleventh century. This book details events that are substantiated by hard facts and logic, and validated by new astronomical research and statistical analysis of ancient sources.

Customer Reviews:

Calculations are only as good as your numbers.......2007-08-03

Yes, we can all agree that mainstream history is nearly 100% BS due to politics, economics, ego, problems with dating techniques, and various conspiracies. Agreed. But, I've been researching the distinct possibility that human history (in terms of civilizations) are much more ancient than we've been told, so coming across this book was very interesting to me. I wondered how Fomenko could be wrong (if at all) because he is very persuasive in his presentations. Then it dawned on me. If at previous times in prehistory, due to the various catastrophies that are well documented (comets, asteroids, planetary disruptions, plasma discharge, pole reversals, etc) the Earth was in a different position in relation to the sun, different tilt on its axis, different orbit, different rotation (in terms of velocity and DIRECTION), and the continents were in different positions, then would this not cause the ancients to see the sky (constellations) differently? In other words, is Fomenko making erronious assumptions about the physics of the Earth in pre-history, which then corrupt his data with regards to dating the relevant astrology? The last event to seriously disrupt our planet occured roughly 3500 years ago, according to other good researchers, so is it possible Fomenko has been confused by this? The vastly different physics of our planet in the not so distant past may explain this confusion, which is not to say the "mainstream" version of history is correct; on the contrary. I am not an expert in these fields, but wanted to see if this idea could spark discussion.

Pants on fire?.......2007-07-19

Will people ever read before spamming? Yes, Jesuits could not rewrite world history alone, they had help. Anyway, Dr Prof Acad A.Fomenko does not point to jesuits as the driving force of world wide history manipulation in published volumes 1,2,3;, actually he barely mentions the poor devils. Check it with 'Search inside' feature, please. China is rarely mentioned either, in fact, Dr Fomenko is completely eurocentric. Right, his theory contradicts all mainstream schools of history, because in their actual state they are all built on blatantly erroneus chronology. You don't need a mysterious cabal (conspiracy) to falsify history, the falsification is its modus operandi. It is inherent to history(ians) to falsify (distort) events, as it is inherent to humans to boast as it is inherent to power (authority) to legimize itself by referrring to glorious past made to its own order. Dr Prof Fomenko and team have identified scores of instances of such manipulation in Russian, European, etc.. history, and delivered valid statistical proof thereof. His own 'reconstruction' is completely another story. Forget c14 as a valid method of dating. W.Libby has initially discovered a brilliant method of INDEPENDENT dating. Too bad, c14 method has become a joke after a forced marrige with dendrochronology with consensual chronological scale inbuilt. Radiocarbon method can't stand blind tests, but is so very productive as a rubberstamp.

Accepted History & Chronology Must Be Changed. .......2007-04-09

There is no doubt that history as most know it is a sham, & institution's version of History both University & Church is fradulent & inaccurate. Everything was established with an agenda, The real "Dark Ages" are now when we have access to incredible amounts of information past authorities & more important 'common folk' didn't have but our institutions & educators are slow to evolve because of what has ignorantly & arrogantly been taught for too long. This is on many subjects not just Chronology.

For anyone to question "Why would a Mathematician have anything credible to say of History?" The answer is from Dr. Fomenko's preface in the book: "It would be worthwhile to remind the reader that in the XVI-XVII century Chronology was considered to be a subdivision of Mathematics." These volumes could possibly be some of the most important works to date & should be read by everyone with an interest in History, especially professors & educators who have a duty to the public. I have read both books & must say that 'Chronology 1' has some very eye opening & revolutionary information. Even if these volumes are part true the implications are profound & opens the doors to further investigations & questions which must be done. I speak several different lanquages & must say the logic Dr. Fomenko uses with "inflection" of words & words being read from left to right in one region & right to left in another then written backwards, the removal of vowels & get down to basics of words, or different cities & locations having the same name etc. is correct. Vowel usage has always been optional & varied, actually complicating linquistics & study. The first thing one has to understand is that words never had a fixed spelling in history like we do now, the spelling of words was mutable & regional, as well as names & titles of people were vast, varied & changed, NOTHING WAS FIXED or understood linear. Matters of Life & Death as well as financial profiteering yesterday & today were & are made with ignorant, illogical & conspiratorial views of history & reality, it's time people get closer to the Truth & society collectively grow up.

Very Interesting.......2007-03-07

It is a good proposal and I believe it will mature into something even better in the future. I think it deserves to be read.

History as Science Fiction.......2007-01-10

Anatoly Fomenko has written a very intriguing book, full of pictures, charts, and computer 'proof' of his thesis: backwards of AD900 we don't really know what happened or when. Between AD900 and AD1600 there is more certainty, but there is still a lot of fuzzy ground, and things don't get reliable until we get past the 1600's where the printing press made it very difficult for the perpetrators of this timeline manipulation to change anything that had been committed to print. The Dark Ages did not happen. Books were burned for a reason. One organization has doubled the actual length of its existence by expanding the real chronology. Read why.

I had always wondered why Christ died about AD33 and yet men waited until the 11th century to form the Knights Templar, the Cathars, etc and go after the Holy Land by force. Why the 1000 year gap? Turns out there wasn't more than a 10-12 year gap and he proves it using astronomy. This also implies that the planet is not as old as we have been told, and current Christian and other creationist scientists are already championing that idea without being aware of Fomenko's book. The two groups, creationist scientists and the Russian mathematical analysts corroborate each other. Fascinating.

Of course, all this flies in the face of what we have been told traditionally is the 'proper' chronology of western civilization, and most readers will experience 'cognitive dissonance' in reading this book. It means that our history going backwards from AD1600 becomes progressively more incorrect and unreliable until it cannot be trusted at all... in the space of 700-800 years.

Naturally, the curious, open-minded reader will want to know WHO did this, WHY, and did any of the events we think of as really ancient ever happen?
Dr. Fomenko is a respected scientist/mathematician at Moscow State University who has already answered these questions to the satisfaction of his initially skeptical colleagues. Most of them are now believers, a few still refuse to believe (the usual diehards), and of course the western press has ignored Fomenko's work -- for obvious reasons when you read the book. The ones who perpetrated this chronology ruse have a lot to answer for. They are still with us. That's why this book is a well-kept secret.

I gave the book a 4-star rating because I was unable to check out some of his claims; those I checked were as he said. But if even 1/3 of his claims are true, this punches a big hole in what we think is our history, the meaning of western civilization, our educational process (for repeating the ruse as gospel), and the trustworthiness of the organization that perpetrated this ruse, well-intentioned or not.

This book relates to current research into a Young Earth paradigm, to John Keel's discoveries about our planet, and Fr Malachi Martin's insights (in his now out-of-print books). We are indeed sheep who are manipulated and kept ignorant -- for a reason. While knowing what these men have to say may be the "booby prize" (as in: 'what can you do with this knowledge?'), it will provide interesting reading. Didn't someone say: "...and the Truth will set you free."?? For you to judge if this book contains the truth.

King Zog of Albania: Europe's Self-Made Muslim Monarch

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Pulling Your Country out of the Middle Ages by Its' Bootstraps
A must read for anyone interested in Balkan history/politics
King Bird the First
Fascinating, well-written

King Zog of Albania: Europe's Self-Made Muslim Monarch
Jason Tomes
Manufacturer: NYU Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0814782833
Release Date: 2004-03-01

Book Description

"An outstanding biography of the most unusual and controversial king of the 20th century. Highly recommended."—CHOICE

"Vivid and atmospheric, but based on solid and scrupulous research, this is an outstanding account of one of the most intriguing figures in twentieth-century Balkan history. Non-specialists will read it with pleasure and fascination, and even specialists in Albanian history will find much to learn here from Jason Tomes's marvelously lucid analysis of the politics and diplomacy of the period."
—Noel Malcolm, author of Bosnia: A Short History and Kosovo: A Short History

"Very well researched, critical yet balanced, this is the best book about Zog to have appeared in any language."
—Bejtullah Destani, Director of the Centre for Albanian Studies

Shortly before 5 p.m. on Saturday, September 1, 1928, Europe gained a new kingdom and its only Muslim king: 32-year-old Zog I of the Albanians. Few foreign journalists were present in the Parliament House in Tirana to hear him swear his oath on the Koran and the Bible, yet the birth of the Kingdom of Albania—a native monarchy, not an alien imposition—did not go unnoticed abroad.

King Zog (1895-1961) was a curiosity, and so he has remained: the most atypical European monarch of the twentieth century, a man entirely without royal connections who created his own kingdom. By contemporaries, he was variously labeled "the last ruler of romance," "an appalling gangster," "the modern Napoleon," "the finest patriot," and "frankly a cad." Even today his reputation is disputed, but Zog is undeniably one of the foremost figures in Albanian history. Though notorious for cut-throat political intrigue, he promised to bring order and progress to a land that had long known little of either. "It was I who made Albania," he claimed.

Zog's reign ended in 1939; Italian Fascists forced him into exile and post-war Stalinists kept him there despite his best efforts to return. In this first full biography, Jason Tomes explores the reality behind the man described in The Times as "the bizarre King Zog" and shows him to have been the product of a unique time and place. Tomes invites readers to set aside their assumptions about modern European monarchy and meet a king who fired back at assassins and paid his bills with gold bullion.

Customer Reviews:

Pulling Your Country out of the Middle Ages by Its' Bootstraps.......2007-07-16

Ahmet Zogolli (Zogu, King Zog) is one of the great 'characters' of the early twentieth century. Born into a powerful clan in Northern Albania, he was destined to be a leader of men from birth. But Zog wanted to be more than just another petty warlord, he wanted to be a King. Jason Tomes has done a yeomanlike job of turning this 'myth' into a real person, he has shown him (as much as possible) with all his faults and gifts; trying his best to see through the smoke screen that swirls around him.

The man who at 22 was a colonel in the Austro-Hungarian Army, Minister of the Interior at 24, President at 29, King at 34 and ex-King at 45, is not an easy one to pin down. Like Albania during the second half of the twentieth century, little was published or known of the goings on during the early days of the Republic/Kingdom. Even today, few people could tell you much about Albania, much less find it on a map. It was the only country carved out of the Ottoman Empire at the end of WW1 that did not have a nationalist movement. The country was created more to keep it out of the hands of Greece and Yugoslavia than anything else.

Under the Ottomans, the valleys were divided up into separate administ- rative area that were each ruled by a Bey who then reported to a Pasha who had power over a larger district. Albania was made up of more than six districts one of which was Kosovo. When the Balkans were divvied up at Versailles, Albania ended up over 90% Albanian, but, leaving more Albanians living outside of the country than in. The Greeks wanted the South which was Greek Orthodox, and the Yugoslavs wanted the north which was Roman Catholic (as part of Croatia).

Zog managed to set-up a government in Tirana (which was the middle of nowhere) and stage manage a government by playing off the different Beys against each other. He relied heavily on a gendarmarie that was primarily made up of his historical supporter (from the Mati Valley). While holding off both the Greeks and Serbs (Yugoslavs) he became more and more indebted to the Italians and finally lost his Kingdom to Mussolini in 1939.

As an ex-King he only was acknowledged by Turkey and Egypt, and during his time in England during WW2 he was never given any recognition or money for guerilla warfare from the Allies. The country was handed to the communist insurgents under Enver Hoxha (with a lot of help from Stalin and Tito) at the end of the War. He finally died a recluse in the south of France.

Tomes shows the tragedy of how Albania never was important enough to anyone but the Italians (and then as a colony) for Zog to be able to create a viable government. He talked as if he wanted to create a constitutional monarchy, but first he had to create a country and an educated middle class. He was not altogether altruistic, since he probably stole half the money that came into the country as aid from the Italians, but then he strikes one as a realist and put himself in the forefront whenever he could.

A must read for anyone interested in Balkan history/politics.......2005-06-18

Noel Malcolm calls it fantastic - this should be enough of a reason for anyone who has interest in Balkan history and politics to read this book. Well researched, balanced but witty and with a tat of the usual Western cynical eye describing Balkan events, people or politics. I doubt there is a more well researched book ever written, in any language, on King Zog and the period of the Albanian Monarchy.

King Bird the First.......2005-06-14

In hindsight, it was probably inevitable that King Zog of Albania would be driven from his throne in 1939. A British diplomat who worked with Zog found him amusing, but believed the King would probably end up assassinated. The conditions in Albania made that a very likely fate. It is a time and place well described in this groundbreaking biography of King Zog written by Jason Tomes.

When Albania broke from the Ottoman Empire in 1913, it was a poor and rural country. The Ottomans had forbidden the teaching of the Albanian language in the schools and many of the people were illiterate. There had been very little done in recent years to develop the country and it was isolated from neighboring Europe by its mountainous terrain and perhaps because it was largely a Muslim country.

The Ottoman system of benign neglect did nothing to discourage the clannishness of the Albanians. Europeans were skeptical that there could even be an independent Albania. Zog saw that it was necessary to make Albanians into citizens, instead of clansmen. This would not be an easy task. The "average Albanian knows nothing about nationality," Zog said. "He has always looked up to the head of his tribe, or his Bey, as the supreme authority."

Ahmet Zog was born in 1895 in Mati environs. He spent some of his adolescence in Istanbul, soaking up the political atmosphere of the Young Turks. He returned when Albania was liberated and later fought alongside the Austrians against the Italians who were occupying part of Albania. The Austrians, who had designs on Albania, considered the young chieftain useful enough to keep in Vienna in case they would need him after the First World War. Later, Zog staged a coup d'état with the help of Yugoslavia and, during his reign, he made Albania into an Italian satellite state.

Zog picked up foreign languages and some sophistication that many of countrymen didn't have, but he also needed to maintain his Albanian roots. Zog was born the son of a Mati Chieftain and his clansmen were his power base. As described in Edith Durham's "High Albania," northern Albania was the land of the blood feud, a place reminiscent of the West Virginia of the Hatfields and the McCoys, where people asked not what their neighbor died of, but who had killed him. His clansmen were both credits and debits to him. It was with their help (and well distributed gold) that Zog was able to overthrow the republican government of Fan Noli. Yet, even when he was trying to introduce laws outlawing blood feuds, he was obligated to participate in them to keep face with his clansmen.

The story of Zog's reign is mostly one of manipulation by the Italians. The Greeks and Serbs were both interested in carving up Albania, but the Italians were the neighbors with the most money. The Italians built roads and sold the Albanians weapons (often hopelessly obsolete) and made Zogist Albania into a puppet state. For his part, Zog got a good deal of loot, including funds for "a white silk tunic with gold frogging, epaulettes...a white fur hat with plume, a black cloak, and white patent leather boots with gold spurs." Besides looking the part of a king, he became rich as one by often getting the better part of a deal, as when he pocketed 300,000 lira selling the Italians inaccessible forestlands in Mati. He always regarded refusing a bribe as looking a gift horse in the mouth, Tomes writes. After Zog was exiled from Albania, he moved from country to country burdened with the many cases of gold that he had acquired during his regime.

Besides being a biography of a scoundrel dominated by an even bigger scoundrel (Mussolini), Tomes gives some interesting descriptions of Albania in the 1920s and 1930s. He describes the capital of Tirana as city that smelt of mutton and coffee grounds, which was covered in a cloud of dust in the summer and slimy mud in the winter, and where school children were required to recite a catechism that included the lines "where does the mud seem sweeter than honey? In Albania." Many Albanians were more Turkish in manner than the Turks in Atatürk's new republic, yet they were still drawn to European and American culture. Tomes writes about moviegoers who boggled at the fancy-dress films of Greta Garbo while scoffing at westerns and war movies as being hopelessly unrealistic.

Zog was a hard-working ruler and physically brave, but when the Italians overthrew him, the people hardly noticed. Tomes even writes that the invading Italians made the country more prosperous. When Zog (or "bird" in Albanian) became king and rather hopefully named himself King Zog the first, he was mocked abroad as King Bird I. Yet he couldn't name himself "King Ahmet" because he didn't want to be seen as a Muslim ruler and yet he couldn't disavow Islam. Looking at Zog's reign, it is easier to understand how later Albanian rulers became suspicious of foreign powers and organized religion.

After Zog and the Second World War, the communists came to power under the Stalinist Enver Hoxha. His regime was so repressive that many Albanians today hold King Zog in some esteem. Tomes calls this a sobering thought.

Fascinating, well-written.......2004-08-05

Obscure subject, but a wonderful book -- thorough, well-researched, and well-written. If you're a history buff, this is a must-read.

History: Fiction or Science? Chronology 2 (Chronology)

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Check and see
Suprise! Suprise!
Prescient St Augustine?
Something of a disappointment
Romulus courts Helen, Paris founds Rome, Moses goes to Troy..

History: Fiction or Science? Chronology 2 (Chronology)
Anatoly T Fomenko
Manufacturer: Delamere Resources LLC
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 2913621066

Product Description

`History: Fiction or Science? Chronology 2` is the second volume of the most explosive and astounding tractate on history ever written - however, every theory it contains, no matter how unorthodox, is backed by rock solid scientific data. The book is easy and pleasant to read; it is well-illustrated, contains hundreds of charts, graphs and illustrations, copies of ancient manuscripts, and countless facts attesting to the falsity of the chronology used nowadays. You will be amazed to discover: - That the chronology universally accepted today and taken for granted is simply wrong; - That ALL methods of dating of ancient sources and artefacts known today are erroneous or non-exact; - That there is not a single document that could be reliably dated earlier than the XIth century; The Author refers to the Middle Ages as the Antiquity and proves mutual superimposition of the Second and the Third Roman Empire, both of which become identified as the respective kingdoms of Israel and Judah. Furthermore, he asserts that the famous reform of the Occidental Church in the XI century by Pope Gregory Hildebrand was the reflection of the XII century reforms of Byzantine emperor Andronicus who in his turn identifies with Jesus Christ. The Trojan war counted by Homer happened only as late as of the XIII century A.D. and the great poet actually lived in XIV century A.D. No stone in history of Antiquity is left unturned. Literally. This book is the beginning of a major correction to the chronology we live with.

Customer Reviews:

Check and see.......2007-06-21

I don't care what other people say of this book. Those affirmig it's fake, they hadn't ever read it. Or have some special reasons to do so. "Living is easy with eyes closed, misunderstanding all you see..." This book won't make you feel comfortable. It'll make you feel free. It'll make you feel you're "not the only one" to feel you'd been lied to for centuries.

Suprise! Suprise!.......2007-03-22

Here is a serie of books which turns "the whole world" upside down. I learned a lot of it and I hope that a new book from A.T. Fomenko will follow very quick. A absolute must for everybody who is interested in history or even a little bit from it.

Prescient St Augustine?.......2006-02-05

We can so far divide the New Chronology into the following three parts:

a) The verifiable theory that proves consensual chronology wrong with the aid of astronomy, statistics and mathematics;

b) The new chronology hypothesis based on a new understanding of known historical facts and the most likely logical explanation of the most obvious inconsistencies inherent in the official version of history;

c) The history conjectures, that is experimental historical reconstructions based on assumptions that the authors believe to make sense in the light of their research and linguistic parallels - void of ironclad factual support to date.

Fomenko's theory complies with the most rigid scientific standards as a whole:

It gives a coherent explanation of what we already know.

- It is consistent: independent lines of inquiry all lead to the same conclusion.

- The predictions it makes are confirmed empirically.

Fomenko goes by the following axioms:

- Chronology is the basis of history;

- Human evolution has always been linear, gradual and irreversible;

- The "cyclic" nature of human civilization is a myth, likewise all the gaps, duplicates, "dark ages" and "renaissances" that we know from consensual history;

- The accumulation of geographical knowledge as reflected in cartography is a gradual and irreversible process;

- The chronological distance between a given manuscript and the events described therein is proportional to the amount of distortions it contains;

- There is no "useless" information in authentic ancient sources.

Why the mainstream historians do not shower mathematician Academician Dr.Prof Fomenko with thanks and laurels?

The Russians:

Because Fomenko asserts that there was no such thing as the Tartar and Mongol invasion followed by three centuries of slavery, providing a formidable body of documental evidence to prove his assertion. The so-called "Tartars and Mongols" were the actual ancestors of the modern Russians, living in a bilingual state with Arabic spoken as freely as Russian. The ancient Russian state was governed by a double structure of civil and military authorities. The hordes were actually professional armies with a tradition of lifelong conscription (the recruitment being the so-called "blood tax"). Their "invasions" were punitive operations against the regions that attempted tax evasion. Fomenko proves that Russian history as we know it today is a blatant forgery concocted by a host of German scientists brought to Russia by the usurper dynasty of the Romanovs, whose ascension to the throne was the result of coup d'état, charged with the mission of making their reign look legitimate. Fomenko proves Ivan the Terrible to be a collation of four rulers, no less. They represented the two rival dynasties - the legitimate rulers and the ambitious upstarts. The winner took it all! Over some 30 years of controversy, Russian historians have made a most remarkable transition - they were initially accusing the young mathematician Fomenko of anticommunist dissident activity and attempts to deface the historical legacy of Soviet Russia; nowadays the middle-aged mathematician is accused of adhering to "pro-communist Russian nationalism" and defacing the proud historical legacy of Great Russia.

The Westerners:

Because Fomenko blows consensual Russian history to smithereens, successfully removing a crucial cornerstone from underneath the otherwise impeccable edifice of World History. Fomenko adds insult to injury, wiping out one by one the Ancient Rome (the foundation of Rome in Italy is dated to the XIV century A. D.), the Ancient Greece and its numerous poleis, which he identifies as the mediaeval crusader settlements on the territory of Greece, and the Ancient Egypt (the pyramids of Giza become dated to the XI-XV century A. D. and identified as the royal cemetery of the Global "Mongolian" Empire, no less). The civilization of the Ancient Egypt is irrefutably dated to the XII-XV century A. D. with the aid of the ancient Egyptian horoscopes cut in stone. He was the first one to decipher and date all such horoscopes, coming up with mediaeval dates in every case. English historians rage at the suggestion that the history of Ancient England was de facto a Byzantine import transplanted to the English soil by the fugitive Byzantine nobility. To reward the English historians who consider themselves the true scribes of World History, the cover of the present book portrays Tintoretto's Jesus Christ crucified on the Big Ben.

The Chinese:

Because Fomenko wipes out the Ancient History of China outright. No such thing. Full point. The compilation of the so-called Ancient Chinese History is reliably datable to the XVII-XVIII century only. It is perfectly recognizable as the Ancient European history, reworked and transcribed in hieroglyphs as yet another historical transplantation, this time performed on the Chinese soil by the loving Jesuit hands. The Chinese are the next in line to go berserk. Chinese history is inevitably bound to get both more ancient and more eventful, proportionally to the growing involvement of China in the world affairs. Chinese historians will keep on finding valid proof of prehistoric Chinese spaceflights until the Politburo orders them to shut up.

The Arabs:

Too bad. Islam with all its key figures is datable to XV-XVI century A. D. Arabic historians may find consolation in the crucial historical role of the Ottoman Empire in the XVI-XVII century. The trouble is that this empire was initially a Christian state, with Hagia Sophia identifiable as Temple of Solomon, according to Fomenko! We can only guess if the acquisition of Alexander the Great (a Macedonian and a Christian) as the founder of the Muslim World Empire will make Fomenko's theories more acceptable to the Arabic mainstream. He certainly does not spare any holy cows at all, claiming The Stone of Qa'Aba in Mecca to contain the lost Arch of the Covenant.

The Divinity:

Despite of reiterated statement that his theory is all about chronology and not Religion, Fomenko stirs up a whole condominium of wasp nests. His collection of anathemas, fatwa, and other condemnations from all parties concerned is already considerable. Little wonder, considering that the history of religions à la Fomenko looks as follows: the pre-Christian period (before the XI century and JC), Bacchic Christianity (XI-XII century, before and after JC), JC Christianity (XII-XVI century) and its subsequent mutations into Orthodox Christianity, the Catholicism, Islam, Buddhism, and so on.

According to Fomenko we know strictly NOTHING about the events that predate the X century A. D.

St Augustin was prescient when he spoke unto us: "be wary of mathematicians, particularly when they speak the truth."

Something of a disappointment.......2005-09-09

After having read the first volume of this expected series of 7 volumes I was triggered by the thesis of these authors that ancient Greek and Roman history did in fact take place in the Middle Ages. So I started studying medieval history of the Middle East - also known as Islamic history - to find out if the opponents of the ancient Greeks and Romans - the Acheamenid Persians, Sassanids, Scythians, Egyptians, etc. - also have their duplicates in medieval history. My search was disappointing: none of the many medieval Islamic dynasties seemed to correspond to the ancient middle eastern rulers.

However, I did find a close correspondence between Herodotus' Persian kings and medieval events:

- the defeat and capture of an Anatolian king - the Lydian Croesus - by the Persian conqueror Cyrus is identical to the defeat and capture of another Anatolian king - sultan Bayezid - by the Asian/Mongol conqueror Tamerlane;
- the Persian conquest of Egypt by the cruel tyrant Cambyses reds almost exactly as the Ottoman conquest of Egypt by Selim the Grim (note the nickname!);
- Darius the Lawgiver of the Persian Empire looks very much alike to Sulayman the Magnificent, the Lawgiver in Islamic history;
- Xerxes, whose main claim to fame is to be defeated by the Greeks at the naval battle of Salamis, looks like Selim II (the Sot) whose main claim to fame is to be defeated by a Spanish-Italian alliance at the naval battle of Lepanto.

I should have expected Fomenko et al. to arrive at similar conclusions, however, they claim that the Persian kings are the alter egos of the Angevin kings of Sicily whose biographies do not contain the exploits of the Persian kings.

The similiarities I indicate lead to the conclusion that Herodotus must have written his Histories at the close of the 16th century. But this is extremely late, given that Herodotus is "the Father of History", so therefore all other "ancient" histories must have been fabricated even later. Yet, the founders of modern chronology - Scaliger and Petavius - laid their foundations also at the close of the 16th century and had the full corpus of ancient histories already at their disposal.

It seems to me that Fomenko has to address these inconsistencies, maybe in the forthcoming 5 volumes?

Another critique of their book is that the correspondencies between different rulers are often based on a superficial comparison of the biographies; upon a more thorough comparison many details appear that do not correspond at all.

Finally, the authors rely heavily on the works of Gregorovius (1821-1891!!) - his medieval histories of Rome and Athens - as the source of medieval history; these works are - at least in the West - hoplessly outdated and have been superceded by more up-to-date works (for instance, Julius Norwich's trilogy on Byzantine history is not even cited).

Romulus courts Helen, Paris founds Rome, Moses goes to Troy.........2005-07-30

If you agree with Fomenko that Roman chronology is basically the foundation of the entire edifice of global chronology; you would also certainly agree that despite its numerous gaps and inconsistencies, Roman history is the best-documented field of ancient history, and thus a reference scale. But how well is the actual date of the Eternal City's foundation known?

Firstly, Rome is supposed to have been founded by the Trojans who had to flee after the fall of Troy. Some claim Rome to have been founded by Aeneas and Ulysses shortly after Troy had fallen; others are of the opinion that there was an entire dynasty that ruled for 500 years between the fall of Troy and the foundation of Rome.

Well, that's just an innocent 500 years long misunderstanding compared with what heretic Fomenko says, asserts, proves in his second volume: Second Roman Empire, Third Roman Empire, Biblical Kingdom of Israel, Biblical Kingdom of Judah, Holy Roman Empire are stories about basically same events, written from different points of view at different times. The underlying events have actually taken place during xii-xv cy. These histories have been written and perfected by multitude of highly talented humanist and clerical writers of xiii-xvi cy disguised as "ancients" with glorious names like Homer, Pluto, Thucydides etc..Chronology 2.0 beta..

Historians are kindly invited to report the bugs.

Frommer's Budget Travel Guide: Eastern Europe on $30 a Day : Albania, the Czech & Slovak Republics, Hungary, Poland, Slovenia & Romania (Frommer's Eastern Europe from $ a Day)

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Traveling at its best

Frommer's Budget Travel Guide: Eastern Europe on $30 a Day : Albania, the Czech & Slovak Republics, Hungary, Poland, Slovenia & Romania (Frommer's Eastern Europe from $ a Day)
Adam Tanner
Manufacturer: Frommer
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0028600924

Customer Reviews:

Traveling at its best.......2007-01-05

The Frommer books are all great ways to plan your trip with the kind of information that makes it work for your greatest enjoyment.

Travels With Zenobia: Paris to Albania by Model t Ford

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To Albania? In a Model T?
a great find, if you can find it.

Travels With Zenobia: Paris to Albania by Model t Ford
Rose Wilder Lane , and H. D. Boylston
Manufacturer: Univ of Missouri Pr
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Discovery of Freedom: Man's Struggle Against Authority

ASIN: 0826203906

Customer Reviews:

To Albania? In a Model T?.......2000-02-02

I admit to a bias. Helen Dore Boylston was a cousin of my grandfather's and I've been feeling terribly cheated since I read this book because I never met her. The story is remarkable. Two young women decide to drive from Albania to Paris. Their adventures are not, perhaps, quite as colorful as one might hope, but their daring and imagination in deciding upon such an voyage make your realize that Laura Ingalls Wilder really raised one heck of a brave and free daughter. I'd recommend it to anyone who's read the Little House Books or any of Helen Dore Boylston's books about Sue Barton.

a great find, if you can find it........2000-01-11

Rose Wilder Lane- Laura Ingalls Wilder's daughter- and Helen Dore Boyleston- author of the Sue Barton - were friends and traveled by car from Paris to Albania during the 1920's. This book is basically excerpts from their diaries and provides some wonderful insight into their lives and is great just because it is surprising in the way that people you never imagined were connected are.

An Englishman in Albania: Memoirs of a British Officer 1929-1955

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An Englishman in Albania: Memoirs of a British Officer 1929-1955
D. R. Oakley-Hill
Manufacturer: I. B. Tauris
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Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1850439400
Release Date: 2005-06-30

Book Description

This book tells of the hold that Albania and its people came to exercise over one Englishman. Colonel Dayrell Oakley-Hill's memoirs provide a vivid description of the landscape, people and customs of this beautiful country and the two very different leaders that he came to know well--King Zog and Enver Hoxha. Oakley-Hill returned to the UK in 1955, but never severed his connections with Albania. Right up to his death in 1985 he was tireless in his efforts to help Albanian refugees and for many years served as Secretary to the Anglo-Albanian Association.I.B.Tauris in association with the Centre for Albanian Studies

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An Albania lover's delight

Albanian Identities: Myth and History

Manufacturer: Indiana University Press
ProductGroup: Book
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ASIN: 0253215706

Customer Reviews:

An Albania lover's delight.......2003-11-27

I have always been fascinated with Albania. With lots of other things on my plate nowadays I haven't really had the time to read many books about this little country on the Adriatic. Once part of the Ottoman Empire, Albania declared its independence in 1912 only to find itself immediately beset by Greek, Montenegrin, and Serbian soldiers who all wanted a slice of the country for their own purposes. The total collapse of the Sublime Porte left Albanians scrambling for support from the Western European powers, but a majority Muslim population (a relic of Ottoman occupation) left many European leaders wary of supporting Albanian claims. Otto Von Bismarck sneeringly referred to Albania as a mere "geographic expression," and other powers seemed to implicitly support this view. World War I led to more troubles, more border partitions, and more problems with Balkan neighbors. The interwar period saw Albania experiment with western style government and monarchy under the leadership of Fan Noli and Ahmed Zogu, respectively. The Italians occupied the country in the late 1930s, leading to King Zog's ouster and clandestine warfare between Albania, Italy, and Germany. As the war ended, Enver Hoxha and his communist partisan forces triumphed over other Albanian liberation factions and took over the country. What followed was nearly fifty years of brutal Stalinist style communism. Today, Albania is working hard at restructuring their country.

"Albanian Identities: Myth and History" is a selection of essays about Albania taken from an academic conference held a few years ago. Included is research from well known Albanian scholars Bernd Fischer, Noel Malcolm, and Stephanie Schwandner-Sievers along with contributions from a range of other researchers looking at Albanian myth through the eyes of the historian, sociologist, and anthropologist. As Schwandner-Sievers writes in her introductory essay to the collection, a central goal of this book is to "trace the context of their (myths) production and transformations, and to show how local and individual variations stand in contrast to the homogenous national claims of Albanian myths." Yes, if you cannot tell from the above quotation, the articles in this book are quite scholarly. It isn't as bad as it sounds, as the vast majority of the contributions to this effort are highly readable. You should have a background in Albanian history, however, because the writers assume you know about Enver Hoxha, Naim Frasheri, the Megali Idea, Bektashism, and the League of Prizren among many other people and places. In fact, if you don't understand the implications of using the term "Kosovo" versus "Kosova," you probably shouldn't read this book until you have a few survey texts under your belt.

My favorite essays in the book include Bernd Fischer's "Perceptions and Reality in Twentieth Century Albanian Military Prowess," M.J. Alex Standish's "Enver Hoxha's Role in the Development of Socialist Albanian Myths," Mariella Pandolfi's "Myths and New Forms of Governance in Albania," and "Youth NGOs in Albania: Civil Society Development, Local Cultural Constructions of Democracy, and Strategies of Survival at Work" by Nicola Mai. Another excellent article written by Roderick Bailey, "Smoke Without Fire? Albania, SOE, and the Communist 'Conspiracy Theory,'" attempts to explode the myths surrounding the role that British operatives played in Hoxha's rise to power after WWII. Mariella Pandolfi's research showing how western humanitarian organizations subvert Albanian political, economic, and social institutions through a type of "supra colonialism" not only resonates deeply with anyone who has even a cursory knowledge of Western European/Albanian relations, but should provide a dozen or so doctoral candidates with enough potential research topics to last the length of their scholarly careers. M.J. Alex Standish compares Enver Hoxha's self-promoting propagandistic emanations with descriptions of Jesus Christ in the New Testament, and finds more similarities than differences. It is unfortunate I cannot summarize every article in this outstanding book, but hopefully the few I touched on will give you an idea of the types of topics covered in "Albanian Identities: Myth and History."

These are the cream of the crop, but every article is articulate, informative, and massively interesting. Other essays address themes of myth in the writings of Ismail Kadare, conspiracy theories in Albanian newspapers, the myths of religion in the formation of an Albanian national identity, and even how Albanian-Americans incorporated their homeland myths into their new lives in the United States. Nearly every article in this book was the equivalent of waking up early on Christmas morning to see what Santa left under the tree. The book takes great pains to emphasize that these articles are not attacking Albanian culture or attempting to denigrate the beliefs of various peoples. Instead, these scholars want to discover how myth manipulation can encourage violence, economically exploit people, and promote ultra nationalistic-expansionist ideas. In this respect, one hopes that a similar tome exploring Serbian and Greek myths is in the works since those two powers have caused much distress to the Albanians over the years. After all, by adopting the definitions about myth in this book we can see that Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic used the myths surrounding the Battle of Kosovo Polje in 1389 to launch an ethnic war against the Kosovar majority there in the 1990s.

Book Description

For Prespa Albanians, both at home in Macedonia and in the diaspora, the most opulent, extravagant, and socially significant events of any year are wedding ceremonies. During days and weeks of festivities, wedding celebrants interact largely through singing, defining and renegotiating as they do so the very structure of their social world and establishing a profound cultural touchstone for Prespa communities around the world.

Combining photographs, song texts, and vibrant recordings of the music with her own evocative descriptions, ethnomusicologist Jane C. Sugarman focuses her account of Prespa weddings on notions of gendered identity, demonstrating the capacity of singing to generate and transform relations of power within Prespa society. Engendering Song is an innovative theoretical work, with a scholarly importance extending far beyond southeast European studies. It offers unique and timely contributions to the analysis of music and gender, music in diaspora cultures, and the social constitution of self and subjectivity.

Customer Reviews:

great book.......2007-05-26

being an albanian, id say this book is dead on. albanian weddings are great, but wierd for sure..people would be shocked to know thats a wedding not a huge party.

Singing at weddings connected to honor and patriarchy.......2003-02-11

If you want my advice, take the first chapter of this book very lightly. Get the background information on the Prespa Albanian community in southern Macedonia and how they have emigrated to North America, Australia and parts of western Europe, but unless you're an extremely serious student of anthropology, skip the array of references to Foucault, Bourdieu, and other "heavies". You don't need them. They're in there to show intellectual dexterity and because when you write a Ph.D thesis you do need stuff like that. I dreaded reaching Chapter 8, entitled "Emergent Subjectivities" thinking it would be more jargon and barely-relevant theories. When I got there, I was happy and relieved to find that it was about "cultural change in a new environment" and well worth reading. That is what I would say about this whole book. It is a really excellent ethnography in the modern style. Sugarman takes weddings and the songs performed at them and reads the whole as a "text" in which Prespa Albanians are saying something to themselves about life, about their `world view'. Their identity is learned, maintained, and even transformed through the medium of song. While many authors claim that they are going to present such a "text" in their studies, many fall short. I felt that Sugarman succeeds. There are a number of useful photographs, the texts and notes of many songs, and a CD. Some tracks of the CD are like amateur wedding videos, but illustrative nonetheless. A few can be listened to with pleasure by anyone with a love of Balkan music.

Prespa Albanian social life conforms to strict patterns, a web of mutual obligations not tossed aside lightly. Your status depends on how you fulfill your social obligations. Until recently, visiting and gregarious behavior dominated social life. Weddings were the crown jewels in this pattern, so Prespa behavior at weddings presented meaningful patterns in their most intense form. The "order" or arrangement of behavior found there---in greeting, seating, food served, dress, modest (female) or exuberant (male) attitudes, rituals undertaken, and most especially, the singing of a vast repertoire of songs in polyphonic mode---establishes social identity. "Honorable behavior on the part of all household members is the precondition for membership in the moral community". [p.197] This is hardly unique to the Balkans, but Sugarman examines the central identities of Prespa life---patrilineal household, gender, generations, plus kin and friends---and how the underlying core values of honor and moral order are connected to music. She links the whole system to ideas of honor found throughout the eastern Mediterranean. ENGENDERING SONG is thus a work of ethnomusicology that strongly connects intellectual traditions of mainstream anthropology with the realm of a specific musical culture. By the time Sugarman writes that singing has "served the community as an activity that integrates and embodies their various understandings of `honor' perhaps more succinctly than any other." [p.225] that "to participate in wedding singing is to engage in a process of `engendering'" [p.253] and "singing is for Prespare the discourse par excellence of patriarchy." [p.282] we fully understand what she is talking about. In diaspora, economic status has begun to replace honor as the basis of social relations. The process is laid out very clearly.

ENGENDERING SONG presents an extremely thorough, convincing picture of a particular community. While the detail may be far more than you want to know, I recommend you read it not only for any love of Albanian culture, but as an example of an excellent study in ethnomusicology.

good detail.......2002-12-31

Interesting book on a small community. This book is well written and moves well. This is not for a person just wanting to breeze through some basic information about Albanians. For a person interested in research about the balkans and looking for greater detail this book is a good buy.

A very detailed working.......2000-02-21

Being an Albanian from the Prespa Area I was amazed to see the such a detailed book on such a small community had been written.

This book explains every bit of our traditions and customs that our community lives with, But mainly our Weddings which are a very very complex events.

Amazon.com

Tim Judah lived in Belgrade from 1990 to 1995, reporting for the London Times and the New York Review of Books; and when the "ethnic cleansing" started in Kosovo, he was there. So his Kosovo: War and Revenge is well placed to offer some insights, variously scathing and compassionate, on the whole, sorry mess. It doesn't matter how many Serbian tanks you (allegedly) knock out with your high-tech bombing raids, "since the most potent weapon in ethnic cleansing is the cigarette lighter needed to set houses on fire." And Judah can evoke the madness of Kosovo in a single, startling set piece: vengeful Albanians rampaging through a Serbian Orthodox priest's house, smashing icons, stealing candles; French soldiers from KFOR "looking on amiably"; a nearby Gypsy house also on fire; and a passing French commander explaining to an open-mouthed Judah that the official NATO policy at this moment is "to let them pillage." Paraphrasing a Belgrade journalist, he notes sadly that Serbia has still not found its Adenauer, nor Kosovo its Mandela, which is what both so desperately need. The introductory chapter, summarizing Kosovo's tortured and tortuous history, is better rendered in Noel Malcolm's Kosovo: A Short History, and for a wider overview of the Balkans themselves, one would certainly prefer Misha Glenny's The Balkans: Nationalism, War, and the Great Powers 1809-1999. For an acerbic and perceptive personal account, however, Judah's book is hard to beat. --Christopher Hart, Amazon.co.uk

Book Description

This is a revealing account of how Kosovo became the crucible of one of the twentieth century's most poisonous ethnic conflicts. Written by a seasoned journalist who witnessed the Balkan conflagration and its aftermath, the book presents a gripping analysis of the origins of the Serb-Albanian conflict, the course of the battle, the issues and personalities, and options for the future. In this second edition Tim Judah updates the story to, and beyond, the fall of Milosevic.

Customer Reviews:

Tragedy Without End.......2007-07-27

Perhaps nothing explains more about the reason for the war in Kosovo then a chart on page 313 showing the population change in Serbia from 1948 to 1991. The Albanian population ballooned from 498,242 to 1,606,690 while the Serb population barely budged from 171,911 to 195,301. Two groups, one Muslim the other Christian, old rivals, each claiming the tradition and ownership of Serbia. During World War II the Serbs sided with the allies inspiring many as the "Serbian David standing up to the Austro-Hungarian-German Goliath." Meanwhile the Albanians took up with the Axis gaining, "an unenviable reputation, apparently preferring rape, pillage and murder to fighting, particularly in Serbian areas". The Albanians managed to appall even the Nazi's (if that seems possible) who eventually disarmed them. Is it surprising that a people who were savaged in the past would fear and loathe a group that was so decidedly winning the population war?

It takes a bit of the book to get your bearings what with Albania and Kosovo and Serbia and Bosnia and Montenegro and on and on. It all becomes very confusing but basically it boils down to the Albanians and Serbians reveling in abusing each other whenever the opportunity arises. It's an age old battle with each side claiming ownership of the same piece of land. In this particular conflict the Albanians started by taking a Gandhi like tact of passive resistance towards the Serbian abuses unfortunately this was a failure and in Srebrenica, Bosnia 8000 Muslim men were massacred creating a popular guerilla movement.

I can remember how, after the NATO bombing ended, Slobodan Milosevic was described as a modern day Hitler but the author paints a very different picture. The author writes, "When trying to comprehend Milosevic it is vital to understand that the man has no long-term vision. His main interest is power and keeping it." Apparently Milosevic was more of a tin-pot dolt than a master strategist with his biggest blunder being the deporting of hundreds of thousands of Kosovars. Thinking that NATO was bluffing about bombing would run a close second. There were no grand designs or extra-regional desires. Milosevic was more a product of desperation.

In the end the NATO bombing forced Milosevic from power and now he's dead but the questions remain. Was it right to use NATO against a sovereign country which had not attacked any of them without a Security Council mandate? The Serbians had suffered at the hands of the Albanians and thus took revenge until NATO stepped in but afterwards almost a quarter of a million Serbs and others were forced to flee or find themselves ethnically cleansed. It was the Serbs who were now having their homes burned and their churches looted. The author writes, "While Albanians take their revenge today, the time may come for the Serbs to take theirs" So what was achieved in the end? As the author wrote the biggest lesson of Kosovo may be that no lessons were learned. It's just one more bloody example of ethnic hatred and revenge added to a very long list.

Excellent.......2007-04-28

Definitely the best book about Kosovo conflict 1998-1999, although it goes briefly through the entire Kosovo's history with increasing coverage as the time is progressing. The book treats fairly Albanian and Serb side.

Well researched, documented, and thought provoking........2007-03-29

This is a worthy exposé on the conflict in Kosovo. This work includes some provocative ideas as to Kosovo, and the numerous other conflagrations across the world, e.g.

ü ...much of the Kosovo conflict can be related to the fact that too many Serbs have never been willing or able to rid themselves of the idea that the Albanians, with whom they shared a state for the best part of a century, were not to be treated as equals. P 16
ü Serbian and Albanian propagandists now went to war armed with statistics, lies and half-truths, which far from helping either side in the long-run, were to embitter communal relations, pave the way for the rise of Milosevic, the destruction of Yugoslavia and the deaths of tens of thousands. Pp 43-44
ü ...many Kosovars successfully convinced many Westerners that the question of Kosovo was really one of human rights. In fact it was not. P 84
ü ...the police were not trained as specialists anti-insurgency fighters and so they had no idea how to take on a vastly popular guerrilla movement without driving out the village populations who gave them shelter and burning their houses. P 167

Hopefully, this book along with others will spark an interest and further study into solutions to current and future state of affairs involving low intensity conflict and law enforcement.

ü Despite this grim picture, it is also undeniable that huge progress has also been made. Serbs and Albanians are both being trained together for a new Kosovo Police Service.
ü Diplomacy is often viewed as a rather impersonal affair, in which men and women represent their countries and, in that sense, are all interchangeable. In fact, diplomacy is like anything else and personalities, contacts and friendships all count for something. P 275
ü ...optimistic UNMIK officials say that the future of Kosovo is `a process' which has only just begun. Citing the examples of Northern Ireland, South Africa and Israel and the Palestinians, one said that, before any talks began, it would be `difficult and unnecessary to focus on the endgame'. P 301

Judah beats authors to the punch year after war.......2004-03-17

Overall, this is a much better book than Judah's previous work, Serbs. It appeared hardly a year after the conflict in Kosovo, and with the wealth of material that has appeared about Serbia, Kosovo, and Milosevic, it is slightly dated in its tone, though the many quotes and accounts of the happenings on the ground are valuable.

The dirty secrets of this conflict are touched upon: the recruitment of hardcore criminals to become members of MUP (interior ministry police who were tapped to murder civilians and suspected terrorists), the elaborate chain of command that Milosevic worked while avoiding any paperwork that could tie him directly to any war crimes, the flat out aggression by NATO against the civilian population of Serbia, the heightened humanitarian crisis that the bombing actually produced, etc.

While the Serbs are generally the Nazis of the 90s during the Balkan wars, with the Kosovo conflict it is Milosevic who begins to bear the brunt of the blame, while the Serb people are hapless bystanders punished for their support of a de facto dictator whose cynicism sealed his own fate.

The Kosovo war is beginning to take on a strange tint. The 'humanitarian' reasons for the war are suspect at best. The massive NATO bombing helped escalate the waves of violence on boths sides. It also helped them slap together a hasty indictment against Milosevic and his top brass, all charged with war crimes that occurred after NATO started dropping bombs on their heads. Go figure. Meanwhile, it was known from the outset that no ground troops would ever enter Kosovo or Serbia, so there was an expected rise in the ethnic cleansing.

What's interesting is also the cover. It shows the side of a building with a massive hole, the kind usually produced by bombing. Peering out is an Albanian man, suggesting that the 'humanitarian intervention' is, of course, anything but.

Perhaps not stressed enough is the wealth of disinformation about the conflict itself. The number of suspected dead was grossly exaggerated, the damage done to the Yugoslav army grossly exaggerated, and the overall success of the war completely questionable. Is it humanitarian intervention to blow apart a country from above while exacerbating the crisis you claim to be reversing? In many ways, Kosovo was a manufactured war against a trumped-up bogeyman. In a post 9/11 world, does this sound familiar?

The war did not solve the Kosovo issue, far from it. Its product was revenge killings of Serbs who had lived in the province for generations, while giving legitimacy to glorified terrorist organizations like the KLA, which officially disbanded, only to appear in modified form later, attacking people in Serbia proper while the UN stood around and watched. It also strained relations between the US and Russia and with China. It was a heavily protested war in Europe, and it didn't help when the Chinese Embassy was blown up 'accidentally' when it was clearly marked on common street maps of Belgrade. Oops! With characteristic contempt for international law, Clinton had his own war of aggression.

Of interest in this book are the accounts of some of the murderers, who speak in frank terms about their job. Overall, this is a better piece of work than the distorted book, Serbs.

Excellent coverage of Kosovo's recent history.......2001-06-21

When fighting in Kosovo began breaking out and hitting news tabloids in mid-1998, the problem was that few people knew about this region's history, let alone its location on the globe. No one could quite understand the motives of Serbs and Albanians, who were at odds with each other. When NATO began bombing rump Yugoslavia for its conduct against Kosovo Albanian civilians, uncritical (and heavily biased) media reports and press coverage were the only source of information that one could turn to for background. While this may have been better than nothing, this information was far from providing a critical and satisfactory explanation and understanding. This was the case, until Tim Judah wrote his second book, the current one now under review.

Judah is a Balkan expert, who speaks numerous languages (including Serbo-Croatian and Albanian) and has written several articles for many newspapers and magazines throughout the world. His previous book ("The Serbs: History, Myth and the Destruction of Yugoslavia" [New Haven, 1997 and 2000]) put the Bosnian war into its proper context, while the current puts Kosovo into its respective context. The first chapter is a short, condensed history of Kosovo leading up to the end of the Second World War, while the next sizable portion of the book details key events and personalities throughout the 1980s and 1990s that shaped modern-day Kosovo and unwittingly turned it toward a war-path. Judah discusses the outbreaks of violence in late 1997, the failed efforts of Western diplomats in stopping the bloodshed, a critical and thrilling chapter chronicling the failed Rambouillet peace accords in February 1999, a chapter chronicling NATO's 78-day bombing campaign against Yugoslavia, and the aftermath of Kosovo's tragic conflict: vengeful Albanians returning home and killing Serbs and Roma.

Integral to Judah's work is his assessment of NATO's conduct in the conflict. His thesis is that the entire war was one of "human error," where Western diplomats foolishly believed that they could make Serbia's Milosevic back down within one week. Milosevic, on the other hand, believed NATO to be bluffing and took the alleged bluff. Tensions mounted within the NATO alliance, other world superpowers (in the military sense, aka. Russia and China) began bracing themselves for toil with the US, while Albanian and Serb civilians were either massacred or blown up by NATO's firepower. Totally unprepared of what to expect, NATO carried out blunder after blunder, failed to stop massacres in Kosovo and perhaps made the Balkans even more tense and unstable than before.

It is imperative that readers consult Judah's work for every meticulous detail surrounding Kosovo's recent history. Readers should consult other recent works in understanding Kosovo's ancient past to determine if Serbs really have rightful historical claims to the province, for Judah's first chapter is merely a primer. Of course, there are those critics out there that will cite, as I mentioned in another review, that Judah is not a "professional historian." It is likely that his knowledge, experience and excellent writing style makes his book more valuable and a much better, thrilling and informative read than the work of any academic.

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travel guide works

The first was better

The Only Practical Guide to Albania!

Albania, 2nd: The Bradt Travel Guide
Gillian Gloyer
Manufacturer: Bradt Travel Guides
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Bosnia and Herzegovina, 2nd: The Bradt Travel Guide

Macedonia, 2nd: The Bradt Travel Guide

ASIN: 1841621498

Book Description

Albania is perhaps the last hidden corner of eastern Europe, newly opening its frontiers to travelers after decades of tyranny and instability. Written by an insider and Albania enthusiast, the Bradt guide to Albania takes a fresh look at how and where to explore the heritage of a country influenced by the Greeks, Romans, Italians, and Turks--who have all left their mark on the landscape and culture. Albania boasts a breathtaking natural beauty, splendid and empty beaches, excellent local wines, a Mediterranean climate, and a tradition of hospitality, making it a potentially prime holiday destination, easily accessible by air, ferry via the Greek islands and Italy, or even by road via mainland Greece, Montenegro, or Kosovo.

Features include:
>Archaeological attractions and museums plus historic background
>In-depth coverage of the capital, Tirana
>Cultural background including topics such as communist nostalgia and blood feuds
>Easy-to-follow guide to the Albanian language

Customer Reviews:

travel guide works.......2007-01-11

i live in albania as a foreigner employed by the UN. we have found this guide to be mostly accurate. many guides on albania miss things or are just plain wrong. this is one of the better ones--take it fromo a resident who has bought many bad travel guides about this little explored country.

The first was better.......2006-11-06

The second edition isnt fully rewritten, there are a lot of things which changed thence, but arent mentioned. ( Banka e Kursimeve since 2005 is Raiffeisen bank )
The style of the second one is for the more stupid travelleres: there is more hotel and restaurant addresses, less history, more advices how to travel by bike and how to tramping, but less about the feeling of the country. And there are a lot of boxes about unimportant english people, who once spent in this country some time, and nothing about the people, who have made more about Albania...

The Only Practical Guide to Albania!.......2006-09-04

If you want to travel around Albania and do more than just hit the few most visited highlights, this is no doubt the book to take.

It is the only English-language guide devoted to Albania alone, and it offers a good coverage of the places and things to see, fairly up to date details of transport and accomodation options, decent maps of both regions and individual towns or cities, as well as well-written background information on culture and history. All the stuff you would expect from good practical guidebooks like the better-known Lonely Planet series (whose coverage of Albania is dismal!).
It is also fairly balanced in covering both budget and upmarket places to stay, something other books often fail at.

So why only 4 stars?
Well, some of the maps would need to be more accurate - they sometimes showed places on the wrong street or corner. Also, in a few cases, practical details were missing, with the existence of accomodation being mentioned, but not the usual details on how much it cost. Same goes for transport info.
Finally, and most mystifyingly, the author has chosen to use non-standard place names ("definite", conjugated forms) even though she herself admits this form is not what you will see in Albania on maps, destination signs of buses or road-signs!

However these shortcomings are well outweighed by all the useful info in the book. If you are planning to tour this little-visited country independently, don't leave home without a copy!

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