Although this film may seem unnecessarily graphic and gruesome at times, the violence only serves to underscore an intensely powerful bond between two friends as well as the ongoing problems between Turks and Kurds, even abroad.

Somehow I got through Thucydides’ “History of the Peloponnesian War,” but couldn’t make it through this…

Robert Kaplan received acclaim for his earlier work, “Balkan Ghosts” (which was excellent), but “Eastward to Tartary” blows it out of the water. The way Kaplan is able to explain the complex religious and tribal conflicts in the Near and Middle East is remarkable, especially his ability to convey these problems to westerners, predisposed to view the problems of these far-off peoples in the context of our own experience (which is wrong). He writes in a very realist kind of way, all the while keeping the text fresh and interesting by infusing it with stories from his personal travels in these regions. And that’s another strength for Kaplan; instead of simply digesting and regurgitating volumes on these places (which is certainly not to say that he is not well-read), he goes and experiences the conflicts and the problems first-hand, meeting all manner of people and synthesizing their experience to make a statement about the greater issues at hand. He is some glorious combination of historian, journalist, and travel writer all in one.

I wish I could talk like Aaron Sorkin writes…

I started watching because the pilot episode happened to be on TV one night (cable not HBO) and Peter Krause was great in Sports Night…been hooked ever since. This show is so great because it’s so original…even the intro sequence is visually and musically different than anything I’ve ever seen before on television, and the plot lines are fresh. And most importantly, macabre but funny.

This book provides a decent historical overview of the conflict in the Balkans in the 1990s with perspective from locals of all walks of life, and manages to successfully integrate factual history with personal travelogue in a sincere and interesting manner. The sections on Romania and Bulgaria are especially poignant, although the section on the former Yugoslavia and Albania is a bit disinterested…you can tell these countries did not mean as much personally to Kaplan as Romania and Bulgaria. Great for an armchair traveler or casual historian.