This accessible and engaging book covers the full span of Serbia's history, from the sixth-century Slav migrations up to the present day. It traces key developments surrounding the medieval and modern polities associated with Serbs, revealing a fascinating history of entanglements and communication between southeastern and wider Europe, sometimes with global implications. This is a history of Serb states, institutions, and societies, which also gives voice to individual experiences in an attempt to understand how the events described impacted the people who lived through them. Although no real continuity between the pre-modern and modern periods exists, Dejan Djokić draws out several common themes, including: migrations; the Serbs' relations with neighbouring empires and peoples; Serbia as a society formed in the imperial borderlands; and the polycentricity of Serbia. The volume also highlights the surprising vitality of Serb identity, and how it has survived in different incarnations over the centuries through reinvention.

Yugoslavia: A Concise History surveys the whole turbulent course of the country's history, in the context of the struggles between great powers for control of the Balkans. Torn apart by nationalist rivalries, the first Yugoslavia lapsed into paralysis and dictatorship. Axis occupation in 1941 unleashed a murderous civil war, in which the Communist Party emerged victorious. Tito's Yugoslavia appeared to the world as a peaceful, multi-national federation, but in the end disintegrated amid barbarism unknown in Europe for half a century. This revised and fully updated edition explains why, and takes the events up to the arrest of Milosevic in 2001and beyond.

After the Battle of Kosovo in 1389 and the destruction of Serbian nationhood, 500 years of Ottoman slavery ensued in the Balkans with the inevitable decline of the Serbian Orthodox faith and music. During this Turkish occupation, Serbs were forbidden to own property, to learn to read and write and were even denied the use of musical instruments. The Serbs however were tenacious and maintained an oral history through folk poems and songs. The only defenders of Serbian art and culture in these difficult centuries were the peasants who played the Gusle, a one-stringed instrument. As their punishment for playing a musical instrument many of these musicians were blinded by their oppressors resulting in thousands of such punishments. Being denied the right to music or dance, the Serbs invented a silent kolo (dance) in which the syncopation of the pounding feet became a sort of musical accompaniment to the dancers. This dance is still performed today by Serbian people.The great poet and dramatist Goethe so loved the Serbian people, their poetry and folklore that he learned to fluently speak their language. Goethe was also the major influence in encouraging Brahms, Loewe, and Josef Maria Wolfram to create musical compositions based on Serbian folk poems and literature. Brahms' famous lullaby is derived from a Serbian folk poem.When the Jews fled Spain the Serbs provided a hospitable environment in which the Jews resettled and prospered. The oldest Jewish Choir in the modern world is in Belgrade.The formation of the Pancevo Church Choral Society in 1838 and the Belgrade Choral Society in 1853 resulted in each becoming centers for nurturing young talent. The first music schools were founded through the efforts of these choral societies. The Brilliant work of Serbian composers like Bajic, Stankovic, Mokranjac, Marinkovic, maksimovic, Djordjevic and Binicki accomplished in a hundred years what other cultures had the luxury of creating in several centuries. This books covers the history of over 40 of these composers.

World War I was a bloodletting so vast and unprecedented that for a generation it was known simply as the Great War. Casualty lists reached unimagined proportions as the same ground -- places like Ypres and the Somme -- was fought over again and again. Other major bloody battles remain vivid in memory to this day: Gallipoli and the Battle of Jutland are but two examples. Europe was at war with itself, and the effect on Western civilization was profound, its repercussions felt even today. World War I saw the introduction of modern technology into the military arena: The tank, airplane, machine gun, submarine, and -- most lethal of all -- poison gas, all received their first widespread use. Professor Stokesbury analyzes these technological innovations and the war's complex military campaigns in lucid detail. At the same time he discusses the great political events that unfolded during the war, such as the Russian Revolution and the end of the Hapsburg dynasty, putting the social and political side of the war into the context of modern European history. A Short History of World War I is the first history of this war to be written in twenty years. It incorporates recent research and current thinking about the war in a highly readable and lively style.

Indholdet: General Survey; Prelude to War; War Declared; Comparative Strenght of the Belligerents; Western Front 1914; Invasion of the Marne; Western Front, 1915-1917; Stalemate; Western Front, 1918, the Year of Decision; Eastern Front; Italian Front; Colonial and Japanese Campaigns; Turkish Campaigns; Balkan Campaigns; The War at Sea; The War in the Air; Diplomatic History of the War, negotiations during the War, termination of the War, Peace Conferences and Peace Treaties; The Postwar World