I was interested in the Balkan countries and I wanted to learn a little bit about them so I bought this book. I jumped straight in and it was very hard going. I'm sorry to the author that I am not an expert like he is on the subject, I guess he presumes every reader that picks up this book to be one. I'm sure all the facts are correct but I think he needs to be a little bit picky about how he presents them. Nearly every sentence there was information on things the general reader would know nothing about, without even a preliminary introduction to the subject. Things like wars, army leaders etc - were all in a tone that presumed everyone was following him yet he hadn't even given any background information - it was all very disjointed and confusing. This kind of book really annoys me as he obviously hasn't put any thought into how to put the information across in a format the reader would most enjoy and more importantly would easily understand. I gave up after the first chapter.