Heavenly Serbia: From Myth to Genocide [Hardcover]

The author did a very impressive job exposing the deep roots of Serbia's national myths, which has fed an exlusivist ethnic based nationalism derived from a medieval rather than modern notion of a nation. I found his evidence very persuasive in most respects.

However, I do agree with many of the critics though that the book was weaker for failing to stress much on the Ustasa regime and the atrocities committed by the present day Tudjman-HDZ regime, which played a signifcant role in the current polarized climate (in other words, Milosevic and Serbs are not to be blamed entirely, although they are of primary responsiblity for the region's suffering). However, that does not mean this book is not without scholarly merit. Afterall, the book was about Serbs and their myths, not Croats, Bosniaks or Albanians.

There is much more, discussing the more recent history of Serbia, the role of the Serbian Orthodox church, and the rise of modern Serbian nationalism as the Ottoman Empire collapsed. We find extensive discussion of such figures as Petar Njegos, the 19th Century Montenegrin patriarch whose epic "The Mountain Wreath" was one of the first landmarks of modern Serbian literature, and Bishop Velimirovic, a notoriously anti-Semitic theologian of the 20th Century, who, shortly after this book was published, was named a Saint by the Serbian church. Disinctions within the Serbian community, between Serbia proper, Montenegro, and Vojvodina, as well as tensions between rural and urban Serbs, are also discussed with historical context.

This book is written with a plain pro-Croatian and anti-Serbian bias, and the reader should be aware of that and properly cautious about many of the conclusions. Still, it has the virtue of packing a great deal of material into a package that is rather brief (not much over 200 pages) and easily accessible. The useful material on many subjects that aren't easily available in such accessible English language sources earns this book a high rating, in spite of the clear biases.