Henry Baerlein’s first volume on Yugoslavia’s creation surveys the South Slav lands — Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia, Montenegro, and Macedonia — introducing their distinct histories, religions, languages, and national movements to a Western readership largely unfamiliar with the region. Written in the immediate aftermath of the First World War, it captures a moment of extraordinary political possibility and profound ethnic tension.
Baerlein writes as an engaged observer rather than a detached analyst, and his sympathetic portraits of Balkan peoples and places remain vivid a century later. The volume is essential background for understanding the troubled history of twentieth-century Yugoslavia.