Can anyone recommend some good books on general Balkans history? I'm interested in the full range of history, not just the nineteenth/twentieth century, but books about particular time periods are fine.
Balkan Ghosts: A Journey Through History by Robert D. Kaplan
Right off the bat, I have to tell you that I haven't read this yet. Yet. Because, I did just read Kaplan's later book, The Revenge of Geography: What the Map Tells Us About Coming Conflicts and the Battle Against Fate, and I learned so damn much from that book, that I just have to recommend to you this one.
Kaplan was mainly a journalist. Over a period of many years, he covered the Balkan region extensively. He wrote Balkan Ghosts before the Yugoslav Wars broke out, and this launched the book into fame.
His wikipedia article claims he was appointed by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, in 2009, to a federal advisory committee; and in 2011, Foreign Policy magazine named Kaplan as one of the world's "top 100 global thinkers."