The dissolution of communism and the rise of ethnic and religious conflict throughout the former Yugoslavia, which sparked the war among Bosnians, Serbs, and Croats, has captivated the attention of the Western media throughout the 1990s. But little notice has been paid to the growing ethnic and religious tensions within the Serbian province of Kosovo -- tensions that now pose a serious threat to the security of the Balkans. Nearly 90 percent of the population of Kosovo is composed of Albanian Muslims, many of whom support a growing movement -- at first peaceful, but now turning violent -- for independence from Christian Serbia.

In Between Serb and Albanian, Miranda Vickers explores the roots of this conflict and tracks the recent trajectory of Serbian and Albanian relations in Kosovo. The first third of the book outlines the history of Kosovo during the medieval and Ottoman periods, when relations between the two communities were generally good. The second part examines Kosovo since 1945, when the area fell under Serbian administration in the socialist Yugoslav system. Vickers concludes by surveying the steady deterioration in Serb-Albanian relations since the disintegration of Yugoslavia in 1981. With careful detail, she reveals how a largely peaceful. politically driven campaign for the independence of Kosovo has recently turned to violence with terrorist attacks on Serb political and military institutions, on Albanians thought to be collaborating with the Distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.

The recent turmoil in central Europe has prompted a veritable flood of books by journalists, many of them published by reputable university presses. A select few have succeeded admirably in combining the reporter's penchant for snappy prose with the historian's commitment to research accuracy and analysis. Alas, Vickers's book does not have any of these attributes, but it certainly has the markings of a rush job. The dense narration is burdened by a plethora of marginally relevant facts that frequently appear out of chronological order. There are numerous factual errors, some of which are contradicted by correct representations elsewhere in the text. Much of the prose is taken verbatim from a finite list of secondary sources, which are sometimes reproduced in lengthy block quotes but are also occasionally lumped with the author's own prose without the benefit of quotation marks. The narration is also burdened by the absence of any historical maps delineating Kosovo's evolution under a host of foreign occupations. Fortunately, English-language readers in search of up-to-date information and insights about the Kosovo problem can turn to Noel Malcolm's more accurate and accessible Kosovo: A Short Study (1998). General readers; undergraduates. C. Ingrao; Purdue University From: Syndetics Solutions, Inc. Distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.

Preface and Acknowledgements	p. xi
1 The Rule of the Nemanjas and the Arrival of the Ottomans	p. 1
2 The Great Serb Migrations and the Consolidation of Ottoman Rule	p. 22
3 Kosovo and the Ottoman Decline	p. 42
4 The Young Turks and the Balkan Wars	p. 62
5 The War of 1914-1918	p. 86
6 The Colonisation Programme	p. 103
7 The Second World War	p. 121
8 Kosovo in the New Socialist Yugoslavia	p. 144
9 Albanian Self-Assertion Gathers Momentum	p. 169
10 Kosovo's Flimsy Bridge-Building Role Collapses	p. 194
11 'Idemo Na Kosovu' (let's Go to Kosovo)	p. 218
12 The Serbs Reclaim Their Republic	p. 241
13 Neither War nor Peace	p. 265
14 Everything Started with Kosovo, and Everything Will Finish with Kosovo'	p. 289
Select Bibliography	p. 314
Appendix: Population Data	p. 318
Index	p. 321

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