Balkan currents : studies in the history, culture and society of a divided land / edited by Lawrence A. Tritle.

Papers presented at "The Balkans today", a symposium held at Loyola Marymount University, Oct. 15, 1994.

Includes bibliographical references (pages [137]-140) and index.

Introduction / Lawrence A. Tritle -- Ch. 1. Religion as the Basis for Balkan Ethnicity / Charles A. Frazee -- Ch. 2. The Serbian View of History: A Tightrope between Reality and Illusion / Thomas A. Emmert -- Ch. 3. The Problem of Muslims in Non-Muslim States of the Balkans: Bosnians, Albanians and Others / Snjezana Buzov -- Ch. 4. The Kosovo Question: Starting and Concluding the Yugoslav Crisis? / Veniamin Karakostanoglou -- Ch. 5. The Greek Minority in Albania / Basil Kondis -- Ch. 6. The Macedonian Question as Viewed by the Comintern Between the Wars / Spyridon Sfetas -- Ch. 7. Framing the Macedonian Question: Myth and History in the Balkans / Stephen K. Batalden.

Perhaps nowhere else is tolerance in greater need than in the Balkans, a region torn by ethnic, spiritual, and cultural rivalries for over a thousand years. "Balkanize" has entered the English language as a verb to describe division and discord, and today, as in the past, a miscalculation based on misinformation or a lack of information could easily result in an explosion with dire repercussions not only for the European community but the wider Atlantic world as well.

The papers collected in this volume, the result of an international symposium held at Loyola Marymount University, offer an attempt toward understanding old hatreds and divisions. They allow us a glimpse of why the Balkans remain, just as in 1914, a powder keg close to explosion.