Adriatico: Un incontro di civiltà

by Robert D. Kaplan

«Il viaggio è una sfida che non finisce mai. È sintesi estrema della vita, dove una settimana di strada può corrispondere a un’epopea.» Di città in città, lasciandosi guidare dalle suggestioni evocate dai libri che lo hanno accompagnato durante la sua attività di esploratore e di studioso e dai tanti incontri che colleziona nel corso di questo suo itinerario, Robert Kaplan traccia una serie di connessioni originali e ardite che dalla contemplazione di un affresco a Rimini lo porterà a Corfù, perfetta «sintesi di Italia e Grecia e quindi dell’Adriatico». Non c’è un luogo migliore per cercare le risposte ai mille interrogativi che emergono sul nostro tempo, in cui lo Stato nazionale è ormai in declino e le identità tornano a farsi multiple e fluide, un processo di cui l’Adriatico è stato e continua a essere il prototipo. Qui infatti la metamorfosi di confini, popoli e alleanze va avanti da secoli, con l’incessante dissolversi di comunità, poi riaggregatesi in forme nuove e oggi alle prese con un futuro incerto, minacciato dal populismo reazionario, dalla destabilizzazione politica e dalla lotta per il controllo delle fonti energetiche. In dialogo con grandi autori, tra cui Claudio Magris e Boris Pahor, ed esponenti dei governi locali e delle istituzioni internazionali, come l’ex presidente albanese Sali Berisha, rivivono vicende più vicine a noi o dimenticate. Ravenna, Venezia, Trieste, Lubiana, Rijeka, Zagabria, Dubrovnik, Tirana e Durazzo sono alcune delle tappe che l’autore tocca ripercorrendo un’area oggi più che mai crocevia dei destini del mondo. Uno scenario che spinge a chiederci che cosa è l’Europa, dove inizia e dove finisce, e soprattutto che cosa diventerà, e davanti al quale Kaplan confessa, con il coraggio e lo slancio del viaggiatore: «Sono certo solo della perdita di certezze».

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Travel, Politics, Italy, European History, Geography

340 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 12, 2022

About the author

Robert David Kaplan is an American journalist, currently a National Correspondent for the Atlantic Monthly. His writings have also been featured in The Washington Post, The New York Times, The New Republic, The National Interest, Foreign Affairs and The Wall Street Journal, among other newspapers and publications, and his more controversial essays about the nature of U.S. power have spurred debate in academia, the media, and the highest levels of government. A frequent theme in his work is the reemergence of cultural and historical tensions temporarily suspended during the Cold War.

Reviews

[Laurie · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is plenty of criticism of Robert D. Kaplan's analysis of geopolitics and I will leave it to much greater minds than mine to offer that. What I enjoy about his method is his mix of journalism (interviews with some of the leading thinkers in the nations he's traveling through), history, geography lessons and political analysis as he reflects upon what he visits as he travels. And of course, his bibliographies. His books always have copious bibliographies of books that have informed his journeys from which I often select several for further reading. I have learned so much about parts of the world I may never be able to visit and insights into regional histories that I would otherwise not have learned. Like the cosmopolitanism that Kaplan admires I find myself much more interested in the world beyond my door through Kaplan.

[Mircea Petcu · Rating 5 out of 5]

Regiunea Adriaticii se află pe o falie ce separă Occidentul de Orient. Pe litoralul Adriaticii s-au extins imperiile Bizantin (exarhatul de Ravenna), Venețian, Otoman și Habsburgic. În secolul XX a separat cele două blocuri ideologice, comunist și capitalist. Autorul parcurge din Rimini, în sensul acelor de ceasornic, până în Corfu, toate orasele importante, concentrându-se pe particularitățile istorice și culturale ale fiecăruia în parte.

Robert Kaplan crede că naționalismul populist de astăzi este cântecul de lebedă al naționalismului. În epoca post-modernă ne vom întoarce la identitățile fluide caracteristice epocii pre-moderne. Rolul oraselor și a regiunilor va crește. Autorul de exemplul orașelor Singapore și Dubai, tributare mai mult economiei globale decât unui stat. Se va forma o singură civilizație afro-euroasiatică ce se va afla sub influența Chinei.

”Adriatică oferă lucruri de interes deopotrivă pentru pasionatul de istorie antică și pentru analistul geopolitic, fiind în același timp și o pildă pentru o Europă a secolului XXI care se fracturează în interior și se dezintegrează în exterior într-o mai largă civilizație cosmopolită afro-euroasiatică cu tentă chinezească.”

[Steve Greenleaf · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ve read many of Robert D. Kaplan’s books, and he’s not an easy writer pigeonhole. Is he a travel writer, or a journalist, or an historian, or a geopolitical strategist, or a literary critic, or a memoirist? In different books—and sometimes all in one book—he qualifies for all of these designations. In fact, in Adriatic, we find Kaplan at his most diverse and his most personal.

The bones of the book come from a journey (in segments) that Kaplan made that began in Rimini, Italy, and then moved onto Ravenna, Venice, and Trieste (all in Italy), then through Slovenia, Croatia, Montenegro, and Albania, culminating on the Greek island of Corfu. The common theme is the ties of these cities and nations—these lands—with the Adriatic Sea; and, in a larger sense, with the Mediterranean and the diverse civilizations and regimes that have existed in proximity to the Mediterranean. Around the Adriatic, Rome, Byzantium, Venice, the Ottoman Empire, Yugoslavia, and other nations and groups have all encountered one another, along with Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, and Islam.

Part of the story involves commentary and analysis from another author known as a journalist and geopolitical strategist; lots of reports of conversations with locals—politicians and government officials, academics, historians, and other writers. As one might expect, one comes away with insights into the social, economic, and political situations that Kaplan observes in these lands. All of this is worth the price of admission, but Kaplan’s observations and reporting are not what drew me to read this book twice over. (In reviewing my highlights and notes to write this review, I realized that I gobbled down the book during my first reading, and I would be wise to savor it on a second reading. My hunch proved correct.)

In fact, several more layers in the book take its value far beyond reporting about current events in each locale. To start with, Kaplan makes his trip into a literary tour. Even before the beginning of his account of his journey, we are introduced to quotes from Italo Calvino; beginning in Rimini, he discusses the work and reputation of Ezra Pound; in Ravenna, we are treated to Dante; in Venice, he discusses Thomas Mann (Death in Venice); in Trieste, James Joyce (where Joyce wrote The Dubliners and other works) and Joseph Brodsky; and eventually on down to Corfu, where he discusses the Nobel Prize-winning Greek poet George Seferis. And in addition to these (and other) literary lights, Kaplan mentions authors most often considered “travel writers." In Corfu, for instance, it’s Lawrence Durrell; in Venice, it’s James/Jan Morris and Mary McCarthy; in Trieste, it’s Sir Richard Francis Burton (the nineteenth-century adventurer and translator) and Claudio Magris; and in (the former) Yugoslavia he cites Rebecca West and her 1941 book, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon. These lists of authors are but a sampler.

But there is another layer down in this book. For Kaplan is not a name-dropper; he’s a reader. His admiration for the authors and works that he discusses is frank (especially for historians and their histories). In fact, he rues his lack of training as a historian and linguist. But he denigrates his own experiences and reporting too much. True, those who haunt archives and who bring to life earlier ages do a great service for which they are rightly hailed. Their work brings history to life, not simply as so many tales from the past, but as a set of events and actions that reveal human intentions and projects in all their magnificent diversity. History provides crucial self-disclosure for the human race, by which we can develop the self-consciousness of our species. Kaplan, through his reading and writing, advances this project with a book like this even more than what he could do via a more formal work of history.

Digging down another level, Kaplan reveals his own quest for self-knowledge and continuing self-criticism. While Kaplan rues that his formal education ended with an undergraduate degree, I fear that graduate school might have spoiled his taste for broad interests and first-hand knowledge. And, he proves himself a committed, life-long autodidact, which is the mark of any truly educated, cultivated person. Certainly, Kaplan has role models who are great writers who’ve not been hampered by their (relative) lack of formal education. (A favorite of Kaplan and mine is Patrick Leigh Fermor, who was kicked out of school as a young man and went on the write some of the finest English-language prose of the twentieth century, and who quoted Horace to a captive German general on Mt Aetna on Crete during WWII—a great story there.) Whether a historian, philosopher, travel writer, or journalist, to be at the top rank one must know when to adjust one’s focus, when to use the microscope and when to use the telescope as one searches for knowledge across a variety of landscapes. Kaplan does this quite well. (Another fine example of this ability is the late historian-essayist John Lukacs, whose focus could shift without blurring from the “Modern Age” to Five Days in London, May 1940.)

The final aspect of this book is the deepest and perhaps the most rewarding. This is Kaplan writing a memoir, a confession. Kaplan notes that in writing this he was in his mid-60s, and he’d been to many of these locations before. (See his Mediterranean Winter (2004.) In this sense, this book is similar to his earlier In Europe's Shadow: Two Cold Wars and a Thirty-Year Journey Through Romania and Beyond (2016), which reviewer Timothy D. Snyder described as revealing

[T]he confident, poetical Kaplan, striving as ever in his writing for the proverbial, but also a reflective, political Kaplan, seeking at times to submerge his gift for romantic generalization in respectful attention to the ideas of others. That tension — between an aesthetic sense of wholeness and the intellectual acceptance of complexity — is the real subject of the book, both as autobiography and as geopolitics.

So, this book: it’s as much a memoir and autobiography as it is a book of travel and political analysis. As in the earlier book, Kaplan chastises himself for his earlier support of the Iraq War, having (mistakenly) thought that it would entail the overthrow of a dictatorship along the lines of the 1989 fall of Communism in Eastern Europe. But he doesn’t dwell on this mistake or the controversy surrounding his earlier book in the Balkans (Balkan Ghosts (1993) that influenced the Clinton administration, making the President reluctant to become actively involved in stopping the Serbian genocide. (There, Kaplan was an early proponent of intervention, notwithstanding any impression taken from Balkan Ghosts by others.)

But again, I have to emphasize that Kaplan pulls the camera out further, for a wider focus, for a wider reflection upon himself. A sampling:

The real adventure of travel is intellectual, because the most profound journeys are interior in nature. (Location 89)
. . . .
[I]t is the books you have read, as much as the people you have met, that constitute autobiography. (Location 95)
. . . .
Because travel is a journey of the mind, the scope of the journey is limitless, encompassing all manner of introspection and concerned with the great debates and issues of our age. (Location 96)
. . . .
Travel is psychoanalysis that starts in a specific moment of time and space. And everything about that moment is both unique and sacred—everything. (Location 99)
. . . .
Originality emanates from solitude: from letting your thoughts wander in alien terrain. I boarded a ferry from Pescara to Split a half century ago to feel alive thus. For this reason I am alone now in a church in Rimini in winter. The lonelier the setting, the crueler the weather, the greater the possibilities for beauty, I tell myself. Great poetry is not purple; it is severe. (Location 106)
. . . .
The mystery of travel involves the layers revealed about yourself as you devour such knowledge. Thus, travel must lead to self-doubt. And I am full of doubts. (Location 113)

[A]s I matured and became more interested in abstract matters rather than in atmospherics—in Confucian philosophy itself rather than in merely the setting for it, in the geopolitics of Italian city-states rather than in the art they produced—[Ezra] Pound’s evocative allusions to such matters, idiosyncratic as they might be, arguably nutty and crackpot for significant stretches, kept me from altogether deserting him. (Location 347)
. . . .
Travel leads to books, and good books lead you to other good books. And thus, I have become an obsessive reader of bibliographies. (Location 385)
. . . .
The more I learned, the more aware I became of my own ignorance and autodidacticism. Only in late middle age would I become intellectually comfortable in my own skin, confident that the truest and most revealing insights sometimes involve seeing what was right in front of your eyes as you traveled. The future, I have learned, is often prepared by what cannot be mentioned or admitted to in fine company. The future lies inside the silences. (Location 535)
. . . .
The train is the perfect place to think and read. (Location 602)
. . . .
Even just one day of travel constitutes a moment of lucidity that breaks through the grinding gears of daily habit, so that it becomes a bit more difficult to lie to oneself. I travel in order not to be deceived. Camus writes, “I realized…that a man who’d only lived for a day could easily live for a hundred years in a prison. He’d have enough memories not to get bored.” Very overstated perhaps, but not if that one day was a day of travel. (Location 603)
. . .
[B]ecause there is no redemption, there is only confession. (Location 629)
Such a person, such a writer, who strives for such a degree of self-knowledge, self-understanding, who recollects opportunities realized and lost, and who engages in a such on ongoing project of genuine education--of drawing out one's self, as does Kaplan--deserves our admiration for giving voice to so much that we may pass over or have missed in ourselves.

I hope that this gives you a sample of the many layers of this book and the reason why Kaplan would worry about how this book might be categorized in a book store! It’s many books, many styles, all in one book. It’s a terrific read; a travelogue for the mind; a reflection on many times and places.

[Tom LA · Rating 4 out of 5]

As an Italian, I approached “Adriatic” with curiosity, given the region’s deep historical and cultural ties to my country. Kaplan’s journey along the Adriatic coast, from Emilia to Friuli-Venezia Giulia to Greece, promises a tapestry of reflections on history, geopolitics, and identity.

My overall view of this book is that there is some truth in both the positive and the negative reviews: it’s a great, unique work, and while it’s true that there are many valuable insights and reflections - especially in the historic context - it’s also true that here Kaplan reaches for something so ambitious that he might not be quite equipped to deliver (and he says so himself, in a couple of very personal notes about his own book). In trying to go beyond the standard travel book, and infuse Adriatic with literature, poetry, and more, Kaplan maybe forgot that yes, he is a very good writer, but not a genius, or an all-encompassing renaissance man.

I am familiar with Kaplan’s work as I read his “The Ends of the Earth” and “Mediterranean”. Being a bookworm, I love his genuine passion for books, not only for history or travel books, but also poetry and literature. His passion does not, unfortunately, extend to people (he could have interviewed more locals, gathered some more human testimonies).

And as a people-lover myself, that’s an aspect of his work that doesn’t resonate much with me, or, at least, where I feel like something is missing. I would have loved to read some more interviews with local people.

On the other hand, I found the Kaplan of Adriatic to be a more mature and self-aware author than the one of “The ends of the Earth”. Where in that book we often had some sweeping generalizations pop up, betraying a somewhat US-centric perspective, here in “Adriatic” Kaplan seems to have gained a broader, truly international (and perhaps “universal”) view.

I found the first two chapters to be the weakest part of the book: hoping he would dive into Italian history or literature while traveling on the Italian Adriatic coast, I was surprised to read his prolonged commentary on Ezra Pound’s work. Now, Pound lived and worked in Italy for some time, yes… but his work has less to do with Italy and with the “Adriatic” than any work by any big name in Italian literature. Unfortunately, I didn’t find that a great choice, as with his choice of talking at length about James Joyce only because he lived for some years in Trieste.

Bob — as I’m sure you know, Italy has a lot of great authors!

Anyway, where Kaplan shines is in his historical depth and in his ability to weave geopolitics with travelogue.

Like many authors who don’t particularly like people, he loves history with a great passion.

He explores the Adriatic’s Roman, Byzantine, Venetian, and Ottoman legacies in a way that, although necessarily brief, I found very valuable. He tries to connect these histories to modern politics and identities.

He is also great at big-picture analysis and geopolitical framing.

His main point is that the region sits at a strategic crossroads (as it always has) with NATO, EU, and non-Western interests converging. As a consequence of its geography, and of its strategic importance, this area has always been particularly unstable (especially on the former-Yugoslavian side).

His broader thesis, that the Adriatic is a microcosm of clashing civilizations, is compelling but - as I mentioned - occasionally overreaches. His geopolitical lens, tying the region to global shifts like China’s rise or Russia’s shadow, feels a bit forced when applied to, say, a small Albanian port. I wonder if he overcomplicates what is, at heart, a story of human exchange—trade, art, food—across centuries.

It seems like his political views about Europe can be summarized as: “nationalism = bad. Cosmopolitanism = good”. Which is ok, of course, but again, it doesn’t seem to be very nuanced.

The word “cosmopolitan” must recur at least 100 times in the book, as if it was a holy Grail. And yet, not once he makes an even casual remark about the fact that cosmopolitanism comes with some serious baggage, too: social fragmentation, loss of political agency, and especially a cultural detachment that seems to sit well with a liberal / progressive mindset (the author’s), but does not sit well with a catholic, conservative perspective like my own.

As for nationalism, or, as Kaplan calls it, “populist nationalism,” his thesis that it represents “the swan song of the modern state” is highly speculative and doesn’t seem to substantiate the complex resilience of national identities, which, in places like Italy, continue to thrive alongside global integration, driven by cultural pride and local grievances rather than a mere reaction to modernity’s decline.

Personally, I admire the work of PM Giorgia Meloni, who’s been leading Italy for the last 3 years from a position that, while nominally right-wing, is effectively centrist with a touch of pride for Italian culture and traditions.

Reality is always, consistently and EXTREMELY different from how newspapers and news media portray it.

Kaplan lacks the local depth to understand these nuances.

(He also seems to know only left-wing Italian journalists, which might be part of the problem).

It’s true that Europe is stronger when it’s welcoming and respectful of other cultures - especially Islam. But there are very clear limits to this “open arms” approach that Kaplan doesn’t like to think about much. The main problem of the EU is the lack of a truly unifying culture — because “tolerance” per se is NOT a value, it’s a false value.

Unless Europe finds its cultural center of gravity, it will never be the great unifying force that it can be, and it will remain what it is today: a house with a great roof but no foundations. Kaplan misses a bit of these subtleties.

His stops beyond Italy - Croatia, Montenegro, Albania - broadened my perspective. Kaplan’s sketches of Dubrovnik’s resilience or Corfu’s hybridity reminded me how rich and shared this coastline is.

I enjoyed the lines that the author draws towards the endless legacy of “La Serenissima” (Republic of Venice) on this entire region, combined with the impact of the Hapsburg Empire (especially on Slovenia) and of the Ottoman Empire (more towards the south).

Finally, in the last pages Kaplan talks about Boccaccio’s Decameron, which he read while in Greece. He calls it “the least depressing book that I know, sanctifying what makes us human, which is an earthly materialism”.

Yes, Boccaccio was almost like an early stand-up comedian. But this strikes me as wrong on at least 3 different levels. I’ll go straight to the deepest one: the key to fighting our demons, our loneliness, our inadequacies, our fears, is not a retreat into the fleshy materialism of Boccaccio (who never sanctified materialism, btw), nor it is the distraction of comedy.

We have access to something much more profound, much more real, and much more uplifting.

Dante Alighieri had already written about that 70 years before Boccaccio.

[Zeb Kantrowitz · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sometimes you read a book and partially through it you realize that you don't care for what the author is saying and how he's saying it. That's my take away from reading about a quarter of this book. I was expecting to read about the places Kaplan traveled, and how he perceived/understood/learnt/etc from his visiting these places. But what we got was a treatise on everything that Kaplan had learnt over forty years whether it had any relevance or not. I'm impressed by his overall knowledge but it makes for a lot of diary jottings.

[Andrew · Rating 3 out of 5]

Adriatic: A Concert of Civilizations at the End of the Modern Age, by Robert D. Kaplan, is a travelogue style book, as the author moves about Eastern Italy, and the Adriatic Coast, and ruminates on history, geopolitics and literature. This book was interesting in its examination of spaces as stores of knowledge and history, and the effects events can have on the compositions of certain spaces, be they cities or the like. Kaplan travels throughout the region, stopping off in Rimini, Ravenna, Venice, Ljubljana, Kotor, Trieste, Pristina, Zagreb, Split, Dubrovnik and so forth, and ending in Corfu. As the names of the cities may attest, the author is examining Austro-Hungarian, Byzantine, and Venetian history, as well as examining the Ottoman Empire.

Much of this book is an examination of other literature. The author discusses Joyce, Pound, Eliot and many more authors who spent time writing, working and thinking in cities such as Trieste and Venice. Some of the insights and moments are quite poignant, as in an travelogue, and the author thoughtfully examines their own history and perspective as they age, and the world around them changes. There is an "old world" yearning in this book, and the authors wistful examining of Empires long gone, and ideas slowly falling out of favour, is interesting in its own right. The travelogue style look at architecture and history, as well as how certain cities "feel" from the lens of an American author, is also interesting.

A criticism with the book is its innate narcissism. The author makes many a point about rubbing elbows with the local elite, and this can come across as boorish throughout the read. This is more of a personal criticism and has to do with the style of books I enjoy as a reader, so this can be taken with a grain of salt. My other major criticism is the authors examination of history, and the civilizational determinants (often adjacent to what seem like antiquated ideas on race) of nations and the movements of history. I have always found such arguments to be vapid, and based off of a lens of history that seems to be dying out, in favour of more nuanced perspectives and voices, and a holistic examination of history. These two criticism detracted from my enjoyment of what is, on the whole, a very fun and entertaining read. I can recommend this for those interested in the region, and those looking for a travelogue that examines history, geopolitics and literature.

[Jacques Poitras · Rating 3 out of 5]

What a strange book from Robert Kaplan. I've read several of his books (though none since around 2000) and this one is downright perplexing. Kaplan seems be going through some serious self-doubt, repudiating elements of his earlier books and even (on p. 236) questioning the book that he is now writing (and we are now reading). Early sections on Rimini, Ravenna and Venice are weighed down by extreme intellectual naval-gazing and digression; only when Kaplan reached Trieste and (not coincidentally) starts talking to people again does he slip back into something like his old form. There are lots of interesting ideas and observations, but he tests our patience and makes us work for them.

[Mark Peacock · Rating 1 out of 5]

What I wanted was an interesting history and some good travel writing about the countries surrounding the Adriatic. What I got was some mix of 5-year-old travel diary entries mixed with "Look at me! I read hard books!" riffs. I liked Monsoon: The Indian Ocean and the Future of American Power, his book on the Indian Ocean region, so came away disappointed at the self-absorbed narrative that is Adriatic.

On pg 237 (!) when Kaplan writes "I worry that the book I am writing fits no category. It is not military strategy, political science, original archival history, conventional long-form journalism, traditional travel writing, memoir, or literary criticism. After all, what does the poetry of Ezra Pound have to do with the current position of the West and Russia in Montenegro? ...Have I taken it too far?" I think "Yes, you do did, but you convinced someone to publish it anyways -- W for you; L for me, the reader."

[HippieWitch · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m giving it a 4 but this book wasn’t for me. Couldn’t even get through the 1st chapter.

[Maria Mihăiță · Rating 4 out of 5]

Citind "Adriatica" lui Kaplan, mă gândeam ce să scriu despre ea după lectură. De parcă mi-ar fi auzit gândul, autorul o definește, spre final, cu propriile lui cuvinte: "Așa că mă îngrijorează că această carte pe care o scriu nu se încadrează în nicio categorie. Nu este strategie militară, știință politică, istorie arhivistică originală, reportaj amplu de tip convențional, literatură de călătorie tradițională, memorii sau critică literară."
Totuși, cel mai mult mie mi s-a părut a fi o carte de călătorie în care autorul, pe lângă o sinteză bibliografică istorico-socio-politică, sondează opinia unor persoane reprezentative ale locurilor pe care le vizitează asupra impresiilor personale privind perspectivele geopolitice ale statelor/orașelor din jurul mării Adriatice, linia de falie între "Est" și "Vest", o zonă atât de interesantă din punctul de vedere al civilizațiilor care s-au succedat.
Bref, mi s-a părut o carte relativ instructivă.

[Graham Oberland · Rating 1 out of 5]

The first 100 pages of this book are some of the worst writing I’ve ever read. They read like a rushed term paper where the author is trying to pad his word count with absurdly long sentences and quotes from pieces of literature that have little, if anything, to do with what this book is ostensibly about. Kaplan, a world-renowned expert on geopolitics and author of over a dozen books on travel, for some reason decides that he needs to prove to himself and his audience that he in fact travels and reads books. If I never have to read a sentence about how the essence of travel is the bibliography you build along the way again, it will be too soon. Once in a while he remembers that he is supposed to be writing about geopolitics and tries to shoehorn a reference to China building ports on the Adriatic into whatever long-winded explication of Italian fascist poetry he is engaged in.

Once he leaves Italy and starts talking to academics and politicians the book gets a bit better. If you come across this book while getting ready for a trip to any of then non-Italian countries he visits (Slovenia, Croatia, Montenegro, and Albania), it might be worth skipping to the parts dedicated to where you’re about or go. I did learn a fair bit about Dubrovnik and Kotor, where I am about to travel, from the pages dedicated to those places. The second two thirds of the book are probably of 3-star quality, but the first third is just so bad that I can’t give this more than one star.

Robert Kaplan, I’ve read some of your other books and you’re better than this. Here’s hoping you return to form someday.

[CatReader · Rating 4 out of 5]

Robert Kaplan is an American journalist and prolific nonfiction book writer whose niche is the juxtaposition of geography, history and politics. His 2022 book Adriatic: A Concert of Civilizations at the End of the Modern Age by Robert D. Kaplan (2022) is part travelogue, part historical meditation, and part personal reflection.

Kaplan's research for this book was months spent traveling across the Adriatic coasts, which encompasses Italy's East Coast, Slovenia, Croatia, Montenegro, Albania, and Greece. His approach isn't that of an academic historian but of a seasoned observer, weaving together interviews, impressions, and cultural analysis into a portrait of a region shaped as much by its shared sea as by centuries of empire, migration, and trade. The book's core argument is that geography continues to shape destiny. The Adriatic remains both a dividing line and a bridge, influenced by northward migration from Africa, cultural currents from the Arab world, and the push-and-pull between preserving tradition and seeking economic opportunity elsewhere. I thought Kaplan did a very nice job in drawing out the voices of locals, letting their perspectives illuminate broader truths about identity, politics, and survival.

Listening to him describe Croatia, for instance, I was reminded of the themes embedded in Croatia’s Eurovision 2024 entry, Rim Tim Tagi Dim by Marko Purišić (who goes by the stage name Baby Lasagna). This song, which came very close to winning the whole contest, explores the tension between holding onto one's heritage and homeland and facing the harsh economic reality that often forces young people to leave. That paradox resonated with me personally, as my dad grew up in a picturesque small town on Italy’s Adriatic coast but immigrated to the US in the 1970s for many of the same reasons (and with the same conflicted feelings).

Kaplan captures this bittersweet reality well: the Adriatic is not so much a region rising, but one in slow retreat, even as new waves (pun intended) of people, politics, and cultures reshape it yet again.

Further reading: geography and politics
Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Tell You Everything You Need to Know About Global Politics by Tim Marshall (and other books by Marshall)

My statistics:
Book 257 for 2025
Book 2183 cumulatively

[Matthew Roche · Rating 2 out of 5]

In the 1930s, Patrick Leigh Fermor embarked on a walking journey from Liverpool to Constantinople that he chronicled later in life through two (and part of a third) books, starting with "A Time Of Gifts." Fermor's travelogue is a singular artifact both for the brilliance of writing and conceit as well as a marvelous capping of the great era of classic humanities.

Kaplan, thirty years after his surprise hit "Balkan Ghosts" attempts to pull a Fermor. He wants to give a grand, peripatetic narrative about Europeanness through the microcosm of the Adriatic, and (I suspect) he wants desperately to be considered an inheritor of Fermor's legacy.

Unfortunately, the result is a modestly interesting take on the fraught tension between cosmopolitanism and nationalism overburdened by language that can best be described as "foppish" - over-styled to the point of silliness.

Fermor (who was evidently a model for James Bond) was the product of a very British class and education. He was the endpoint of a thread that began with the medieval liberal arts and held together for centuries until it was utterly annihilated by postmodernism and cultural awareness. A medieval scholar needed to know a handful of books to know "everything" about logic, the physical world, and god. By the American Revolution, a Jefferson or Madison was confronted with a few hundred. By the late modern era the concept of being perfectly classically educated, wielding Latin and Greek and quoting Horace, was at best a parlor trick and at worst a fool's errand.

Fermor pulled it off, quoting memorized passages and recalling historical Roman tribes as he ambled through a Europe breathing its last feudal breaths. Because it was still possible to pretend it was possible, and because he was born too early for irony.

Kaplan fails at being Fermor for the same reason Sam Harris will never be the Dalai Lama - you can only be the purest expression of a system if you are a product of that system. Kaplan was born too late to even have a shot at the ring.

So Kaplan in "Adriatic" reads like an old 60s hippie that went to India and wants to teach us about the Dharma. It is second-hand, awkward, and in some ways too intimate.

Notwithstanding, Kaplan is to be admired for drawing attention and connecting regions and people that are contiguous geographically but wildly separated in the modern consciousness. The eastern Adriatic, in particular, is (to a modern American) unknown at worst, and a cool cruise ship destination at best. The world-historical role of the Balkans is incredibly important, and Kaplan is right that it should be more than a soundstage for Game of Thrones.

The new fad for "Big Strategy," of which Kaplan is a strong proponent, is also evident in the margins of "Adriatic." Kaplan is enamored of the 19th century Hapsburg/Metternich and 15-16th century Ottoman political systems. He is (rightly) horrified by ethnic nationalism, and he sees in the nostalgic fuzz of history a past where the benign indifference of autocrats created a magical world of tolerance. I believe he imagines velvet-lined palaces where avuncular emperors make space for Jews and where ethnicity and place are more loosely defined, but that world is long gone and not coming back without a complete collapse of the world economic system.

If you don't know about the history of the Adriatic, you might consider this book because it is an interesting read and Kaplan has a voice of kindness and respect. But be aware this is Prospero's book - a work by an older writer probably too acutely aware of the limitations of his own power and contemplating the end of his gifts.

[Russell · Rating 2 out of 5]

With such a big sounding title, in such a nice new cloth bound edition from Random House, this book seems it should be more substantial than it is. It took me a while to figure out what the genre is, which is probably the source of my initial uncertainty at least — how should I approach this? what sort of a book is it?

And then there’s something annoying about the narrative voice: I can’t quite shake the sense that, while the voice is constructed around the sort of questioning of things and oneself that comes with deep engagement with places and people that are different from oneself, that same voice comes across as awfully certain about quite a lot, including itself. So while Kaplan often says explicitly things like, “I’m a traveler,” “traveling disrupts one’s sense of self, what one thinks one knows,” “I have often felt like I don’t know X,” he then turns around and pronounces judgment on just about everything from geopolitics and the future (!) role of China in the Mediterranean to the poetry of Ezra Pound (not a very good poet, according to Kaplan). This is not an attractive narrative approach and leaves me feeling a bit like there’s something dishonest going on in the telling, or maybe a lack of awareness on the part of the narrator.

I am thinking the book might be mostly a memoir, which helps a bit on the history front since some things are weirdly off with that. For instance, he spends several pages on Boethius but spells the name consistently without the “h” (Boetius). Where did that come from, and why didn’t a copy editor catch it? And when he refers several times early in the book to the author Jan Morris, who has three books in his bibliography under that name, he seems to feel the need to refer to her as James Morris and put the Jan in parentheses. Again, why?

Then there’s the coverage of the book itself, which from an area perspective is spotty but is much more acceptable as memoir. He does seem to be re-visiting some places he visited many years ago, except for the first two chapters, because of which I got the impression he was going to be exploring rather than re-visiting: again, different kinds of books. Otherwise, I can’t quite see why a book “on” the Adriatic would not include anything substantial about the Italian coast from south of Rimini, where he begins, to Apulia, where the Adriatic ends, or on any of the Croatian islands except for, as far as I can tell, Korčula; nor does there appear to be any dedicated content on northern Dalmatia (between Rijeka and Split), which is sort of a big part.

If it’s a memoir and not so much a research-based book about the Adriatic, then even that seems to require some further qualification, as it is mostly about what the author has read, a sort of bibliography with extensive personal commentary. That can be interesting if the books are good and the commentary is good. The books are often good, and some are new to me.

The commentary has mostly not been that interesting so far, though I did learn something from his summary of Francis Oakley’s The Emergence of Western Political Thought in the Latin Middle Ages, especially regarding Byzantium’s accommodation of the Ancient World’s notion of “sacral kingship” for what would eventually become Eastern Orthodoxy, in effect putting imperial authority in harmony with a clerical priesthood, which helped me understand how old and how different from Western forms of political power is the sort of merging that the current Russian president has tried to make use of in recent years.

[CASPER HILEMAN · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mr. Kaplan tries something different, returning to the Adriatic world as a middle-aged man examing the future. This would be typical of many works, but Kaplan makes it worthwhile in his deep and abiding love of older travel works. Kaplan tries and succeeds to do something new.

[Vanessa M. · Rating 5 out of 5]

My first Kaplan but won't be my last. I valued learning about the Adriatic Sea region (the history, the geopolitics) as well as the personal travel notations from Mr. Kaplan.

[Marks54 · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is Ann outstanding book on the history, politics, culture, and location/geography of the places along the Adriatic. I first read Kaplan’s “Balkan Ghosts” a long time ago. This volume is a well written and interesting but also shows considerable wisdom and insight from his career of travel in the area as a journalist. The book is also exceptional for its references to related classic books on the area and its history, three or four of which I have already obtained. Kaplan at times seems regretful that he lacks the deep focused knowledge of an academic specialist, but I could not disagree more. He is uniquely qualified to bring history, current events, culture, and savvy travel together in an amazingly insightful volume. The integration of so much materials around a focused set of locations is to me a hugely valuable result and renders this book to be one of the best high end travel volumes that are available for the Adriatic or the Balkans.

MORE REVIEW TO FOLLOW.

[Richard Thompson · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first part of this book was wonderful -- travel writing in which place is woven together with literature, philosophy and history and connections are made that are not always direct or obvious. It was like a reboot of WG Sebold's Rings of Saturn, but along the Adriatic Coast of Italy. Then when Mr. Kaplan crosses out of Italy at Trieste, he announces his intention to approach the second half of the book differently by starting to talk with people and to broaden his solitary musings with the perspectives of others. I thought that the second half was going to be even better than the first. This very smart and well read guy was going to travel down the Adriatic Coast on the Balkan side and interact with other equally smart people, who would provide depth and variation that can only come from connecting to others. Alas, it was not to be. None of the people he speaks with shine through as interesting personalities. Their observations are largely banal. And the second half loses the wonderful tone of quirky smart travel writing to become something more like a Thomas Friedman op ed piece. It's just standard journalism that focuses on a multitude of details of recent history so that much of it is noise. There are lots of trees, but no forest. Mr. Kaplan doesn't suddenly become dumb in the second half; he just loses the unique point of view that makes the first half special. I found myself wishing again and again that he had taken his trip in the reverse direction, starting with minutiae and focus on the kind of day to day journalistic details that were necessarily the basis for his career as a reporter and then moving to the broad perspective of the Italian section, showing us how a career spent on the little things can add up to the emergent point of view of a very smart man who has perceived a bigger picture.

[Rob Schmults · Rating 2 out of 5]

If you are a fan of the author’s work - as I am - you may be disappointed (as I was!). The title and subtitle suggest a “standard” Robert Kaplan affair. In actuality there is very little of his usual travel + history + current affairs = geopolitical implications. This book is as much about the author as anything else. His feelings, his regrets, his worries all keep coming up. Most of this has nothing to do with the Adriatic other than occurring to him in a given hotel along its coast. He also spends a lot of time trying to emulate the erudition and easy literary references of his influences (like Patrick Leigh Fermor and Claudio Magris) - but they come across as forced and end up detracting from the book in a way that is never the case with Leigh Fermor. This is all too bad. There is an interesting thesis that occasionally is touched upon - that the Adriatic is once again going to become a conduit from the east and south to north and west. But Kaplan spends very little time on this and his references to Ezra Pound and others don’t illuminate it anymore than his sharing his bouts of loneliness and past regrets about the Iraq war.

[Aaron Brown · Rating 5 out of 5]

Robert Kaplan, deservedly, is a legend by now. I have read every single one of his books and very few, if any, were disappointments. This book is no exception. If you have any interest whatsoever in geography, geopolitics, United States defense and military policy or, really, just the world in general then you need to be reading his books. Adriatic, like a lot of Mr. Kaplan's books, identifies a geopolitical hotspot that he foresees playing a big role in international conflicts and then gives the reader a history, travel diary, and contemporary analysis of the region with predictions of things to come. Kaplan is one of America's great non-fiction writers with a superb eye for detail. I learned a lot in Adriatic and I think any reader is bound to as well. Highly recommended

[Esmeralda Rocha · Rating 1 out of 5]

I persevered with this one only because I wanted to learn more about the region. The author was tedious beyond compare. One more sentence unnecessarily beginning with "To wit" or "For travel is" would have sent me over the edge. The Ezra Pound section was incredibly grating as were his many irritating observations about the purpose of travel or the backwardness of various towns.

The book contained some interesting details and the eastwards incremental journey was a lovely structure. The passages when he left philosophy behind and defaulted to a more journalistic voice are when he sounded most authentic and the writing became engaging. If only he had adopted that direct and interesting approach throughout!

[Andrew Balog · Rating 1 out of 5]

I won't beat around the bush, this book sucked.

At its core, this book had so much potential. The Adriatic is such a fascinating and forgotten region, and there's so much rich history to tell. And what we got here was...I'm not really sure what it was. I think the author is guilty of trying to do much; it was part philosophy, part musing, part bibliography and book review, and part travel guide. And it didn't do any of these things particularly well (yes, let's hear another 5 pages about some obscure poet whose work is only tangentially connected to the place you are talking about). Unfortunately, it was also not written in a readable, approachable way, which sunk it even more.

[Tom D'Hauwer · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Ik ben even vatbaar voor een gevoel van eenzaamheid als iedereen. En eenzaamheid stimuleert depressie en pessimisme, en dat leidt tot vragen over de zin van wat ik nu eigenlijk aan het doen ben."

"Daarom maak ik me zorgen dat het boek dat ik aan het schrijven ben in geen enkele categorie past. Het gaat niet over militaire strategie, politicologie of origineel historisch archiefonderzoek, het is geen geen conventionele verhalende journalistiek, geen traditioneel reisverhaal, geen biografie of literaire kritiek. Wat heeft uiteindelijk de poëzie van Ezra Pound te maken met de huidige positie van het Westen en Rusland in Montenegro? Natuurlijk zoals ik al heb gezegd, zou het bestuderen van de geopolitiek, misschien baat kunnen hebben bij de terugkeer naar een gebied waar veel ouderwetse reisliteratuur over gaat. Maar in werkelijkheid? Ik vraag het me af. Heb ik het te bont gemaakt? Mijn enige rechtvaardiging is dat een gebrekkige amateur misschien dingen ziet die specialisten ontgaan, en dat ik door het bij elkaar brengen van onvergelijkbare zaken nieuw licht kan werpen op sommige ervan, als onderdeel van een door zelfstudie verkregen brede ontwikkeling."

Op bladzijde 294 geeft de auteur zelf een verklaring voor het feit dat ik niet zo vlot door dit boek raakte: het is simpelweg veel in één. Ik hoopte meer te weten te komen over de geschiedenis van dit gebied — wat ook gebeurde — maar de journalistieke interviews en de bespiegelingen van de reizende auteur vertraagden het leesproces enigszins. Uiteindelijk viel dat mee, maar de talloze verwijzingen naar boeken (inclusief fragmenten) die Kaplan in het werk heeft verwerkt, maakten het lezen traag vanwege de collage aan uiteenlopende stijlen.

Toch ben ik blij dat ik het boek heb uitgelezen. Venetië, het Byzantijnse Rijk, Oostenrijk-Hongarije, de Ottomanen... allemaal drukten ze hun stempel op het gebied. De auteur fileert haarscherp de grenzen en de invloeden van de verschillende overheersers. De strijd van de diverse volkeren heeft niet altijd tot vrijheid geleid — integendeel, nationalisme werkt verstikkender dan ooit. Kortom: nieuwe inzichten opgedaan. Het was de worsteling waard.

[Kim Johnson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have read and enjoyed every book that Robert D.Kaplan has written and this most current one doesn’t disappoint. He travels from Rimini, Ravenna and Trieste, Italy down the western coast of the Adriatic ending in Corfu. He has visited the Balkans in the 1970’s, 90’s and now in 2022. He relates the changes that have transpired over this period and shares his discussions with the people of each of these countries to bring insight into the complicated history of this area. I learned so much from this book and it has stimulated me to further explore this part of the world. He includes an excellent bibliography.

[Daan Könings · Rating 4 out of 5]

Leuke introductie over de regio waar wij op vakantie zijn! Ook een goede introductie op andere werken over dit gebied. Qua geopolitieke visie vond ik het niet zo interessant, maar qua reisboek was het wel de moeite waard. De sfeer van veel plaatsen wordt goed neergezet door de schrijver.

[Matteo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Un libro che è tanto e, al contempo, poco. Che è un viaggio per le coste del mediterraneo, ma anche un viaggio interiore e di ricerca per l'autore. Non è un saggio, non è una guida turistica, non è un romanzo di formazione. "Sa solo quello che non è." (cit.)

Scritto in maniera molto piacevole e scorrevole, anche se probabilmente richiede un certa erudizione storica per essere seguito e goduto al massimo, il testo si presenta come il resoconto di alcuni mesi di viaggio compiuti da Kaplan a cavallo dell'Adriatico nel 2018, prima della epidemia di Covid e della guerra in Ucraina. Il lungo viaggio comincia in Italia (dove i capitoli sono basati sulle singole città), a Rimini, prosegue poi a Ravenna, Venezia, Trieste per poi attraversare quella che un tempo era la cortina di ferro (capitoli per nazioni) e andare in Slovania, Croazia, Montenegro e Albania. L'epilogo sarà infine a Corfù.

Ogni capitolo racchiude un'introduzione storica e leggera sul posto, che arriva fino ai giorni nostri, e molte considerazioni di natura sociologia e geopolitica. Il testo è anche arricchito di molte referenze: i libri che l'autore stesso ha usato come guida (intellettuale) dei posti menzionati nel corso degli anni. Una piccola critica, qui, è che i testi richiamati sono per la stragrande maggioranza delle volte di studiosi americani (al massimo, anglosassoni) e, pertanto, potrebbero essere ancora arricchite da altri libri ancora. Dopo l'excursus storico, di solito, si passa ad elencare le meraviglie artistiche e naturali del posto (incredibile la descrizione di Ravenna, per esempio), che vengono messe in relazione la con la storia e i problemi del presente. Spesso, poi, ci sono i resoconti delle tante interviste, più o meno informali, che Kaplan ha svolto nel corso del viaggio e che sono in grado di rendere ancora più vivida, agli occhi del lettore, l'esperienza letteraria del viaggio che essi compiono. Le impressioni di tutti i personaggi sono catalizzate sulla frattura che l'Adriatico racchiude, a volte avvicinando, a volte allontanando, i vari lembi di terra che su di esso si affacciano. I temi principali, dunque, sono i contatti tra occidente e oriente, tra chiesa cattolia, ortodossa e islam, tra Venezia e Impero Ottomano, tra passato e presente.

Al termine del viaggio, in Albania, l'autore trascrive così le emozioni provati in quel momento:
«L'Adriatico è molto più di un componente vitale del Mediterraneo. È anche una linea di faglia tra culture e sistemi ideologici, oltre a essere un elemento chiave nell'identità geografica dell'Europa centrale. Ma non dimentichiamo che il Centro Europa, almeno idealmente, significa uno spazio morale e civiledi spirito cosmopolita, minacciato, non solo dal punto di vista geopolitico ma anche da quello culturale, da una combinazione di populismo reazionario, traffico di stupefacenti, corruzione, traffico illegale di migranti e destabilizzazione russa, [...]»

Sicuramente una lettura consigliata a chi vuol farsi stupire.

[William Snow · Rating 2 out of 5]

Algorithmically speaking, I should have loved this book. Instead, it gives yet another example of how tone and voice and style matter as much, if not more than, substance.

Came across super ivory-towered and self-important. Although I appreciate the author’s open mind, sometimes it’s better just to get out of one’s head.

DNF.

[Riccardo L. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ho trovato interessantissimo "Adriatico", un libro che ha il nome del mare sulle cui rive sono cresciuto e che l'autore definisce soprattutto uno scritto di geopolitica. In realtà la trattazione è così ampia che, se uno volesse, potrebbe trovarci altri mille temi principali e non accorgersi di quale sia l'intento di chi la ha creata: sparsi tra i pensieri di Kaplan, troviamo infatti riflessioni e spunti di grande valore su pressappoco ogni aspetto della vita.
Al netto di qualche "hot take" in ambito storico-artistico (trovo che Giustiniano sia riconoscibilissimo tra i personaggi dei mosaici di San Vitale a Ravenna, ad esempio), la narrazione offre un punto di vista tutto sommato condivisibile e ben esposto sul passato, sul presente e sul futuro dell'Europa - e quindi del mondo- immerse in una atmosfera da letteratura di viaggio d'altri tempi.
È bello come, a volerlo, traspaia l'ideologia cosmopolita e la personalità liberale dell'autore, ma allo stesso tempo - se lo si vuole - essa possa essere lasciata come in un angolo, a fare da sfondo alle belle pagine che leggiamo, senza interferire troppo.
La moderazione nell'esposizione delle proprie tesi e la grande erudizione dell'autore lo rendono un libro adatto a chi cerca più domande che risposte. La sensazione durante e dopo averlo letto è come quella di trovarsi di fronte ad uno dei cartelli bianchi e rossi all'inizio di un sentiero di montagna: si possono prendere talmente tante strade che la destinazione finale diventa soltanto quella che vogliamo scegliere noi, tra quelle infinite proposte della ampissima bibliografia utilizzata dallo scrittore.

Lettura consigliata, specialmente agli abitanti di città adriatiche.

[John Ratliffe · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is not easy for Kaplan to outdo Kaplan, but in Adriatic he does exactly that. This book is a tour de force, and I have no idea what Kaplan could write that would outdo this one. I have followed Kaplan for several decades, but this book is a deeply felt synthesis of the totality of his lifetime of experience and knowledge gained from his travel and historical investigations into Central and Eastern Europe, in the Balkans, and in backwaters of Africa and Asia. He has covered parts of the world that most of us simply ignore or disremember. If you know nothing about Kaplan's personal history, you can read this book or check him out on Wikipedia.

In this journey he starts in northeastern Italy, at Rimini, and proceeds slowly through Venice, Trieste, and Slovenia, and travels beyond through the Balkan states lying along the Adriatic and describes them with spellbinding context. His discussion of Venice hit me right in the face, as he seemed to be describing my own experience there. I saw it first as a young man (a long time ago!) when it was quiet and beautiful in the off-season and saw it again in its current high-season, package-tourism form. But despite this minor disappointment I have sweet memories of listening to the competing string ensembles on the Piazza while nursing a libation and smiling with friends under Venetian starlight with Saint Mark's cathedral standing over us.

Kaplan has traveled for years amid war, civil unrest, and anarchy. I so admire, and envy, his courage in traveling under the dire and dangerous conditions of the Soviet era, in regional wars, and among post-Soviet anarchy, criminality, and high-level political corruption. Those of us who have not or cannot travel in these areas have the privilege of following him within the several books he has written about this territory.

I lament that I do not have the talent nor the intellect to do Adriatic the justice it deserves in a brief critique. Over the years Kaplan has developed a vast network of artists, writers, academics, politicians, and historians to work with. He never fails to credit them and prior researchers for their insights and knowledge. And what I have come to appreciate about Kaplan is that he surveys all prior literature that deals with his subject, giving us the opportunity to learn the scope and depth of his subject. Candidly, I had no idea there was so much literature extant on this area of the world. He gives credit where credit is due and shows the way for those of us who might wish to venture further.

I marveled as I read about his own personal evolution, as he describes it, as a man, a writer, and a scholar. I think he at one point entertains some regret about not going on in academia to secure a Ph.D., but he still says that what he needed was time alone as a solitary and reflective traveler, as his extensive bibliography travels with him and guides him. He always moves around by bus, train, and foot in order to see and study his subject at ground level. He spends many hours alone making his notes and diary entries, but yet he realizes the need to get out and meet people in order to gain insight into the surroundings and political situations. And he does it with old world grace and sensitivity.

I cannot summarize the book itself: it is too broad and too deep for a few cursory comments here. In the final analysis what warmed my heart the most was to learn that his fifteen-page bibliography includes several writers that I have also read and paid my respects to, and whose books grace my bookshelves even now. The subjects of Central and Eastern Europe, the Balkans, the Ottomans, and the Byzantines have always held me in thrall, including and especially in connection with World War One, when empires fell and modern Europe was set in motion, today's European Union and the post-Soviet Republics. And he considers the Austro-Hungarian Habsburg Empire as a founding entity for the entire area, a fact that I have always tried to get my contemporaries to consider. He ends with a very thoughtful soliloquy about the possible evolvement of nations and ethnicities beyond this point, where technology and globalization are pushing people out of native habitat and dissolving borders and national cultures in favor of vast city-states where mixed populations are finding new ways to make lives.

My bookshelves brim with works by Kaplan, Lawrence Durrell, Patrick Leigh Fermor, Dame Rebecca West, Fernand Braudel, Joseph Roth, Paul Theroux, etc., etc. I can only stand outside this brilliant circle be glad that "birds of a feather flock together." I am especially fond of Lawrence Durrell, and it was very satisfying that Kaplan wrapped up his journey in Corfu, where Durrell and family lived for a time, and at which place Lawrence wrote Prospero's Cell, which is an enchanting diary-style account of life on that island, an island which by the way is more important in world history than we might realize, despite that it seems rather removed from center stage now.

You can learn a lot from Kaplan.

[Blair · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Adriatic” is a travelogue of Robert Kaplan’s return to the key cities along the Adriatic, starting with Rimini, Ravenna, and Venice in Italy, journeying down the Croatian, Montenegro, and Albanian coasts, and ending up in the Greek Island Corfu.

The book discusses the Region’s current relationship with the European Union, the influence of Russia and China – with its Belt and Road initiative - as well as the continued migrations from the Middle East (e.g., Syria) and North Africa, and that the Adriatic will likely be a big future destination for many migrants.

Robert Kaplan takes his readers on a personal journey that has spanned at least four decades in the Adriatic. He discusses how the historical forces have shaped the Region covering Christian Europe, Orthodox Greece and Russia, and the Muslims from Constantinople, as well as how these forces will continue to influence the region, along with new players who see the Mediterranean as less of a barrier, will cross and continue to shape Europe and the EU.

“Adriatic” is also a personal journey of Kaplan’s where he reflects upon and at times changes his views of the region. For the Adriatic has changed since his first visits and he has changed as well. And the changes in the region and within himself appear to be both dramatic.

I liked the book for both the learning it provided me, and because I can relate to visiting a region that I once thought I knew and can now see it through “new eyes”. In this sense, the author seems to be using the book to apologise for his interpretations which he admits were flawed. I felt this when I read his book “Balkan Ghosts” long ago, and it is good to see him revisiting this issue – for clearly there were criticisms of this beyond my own.

I’m also more interested in traveling to this area so the book has pushed the Adriatic higher up on my travel list. When I do so I’ll revisit this book as it is full of rich references and writing about the region.

That said the book was a bit pedantic and delved more deeply into the history, literature, art, architecture, and current events, that I expected. At times I felt the author was showing off about the depth and breadth of his reading. In that sense I think he still hasn’t come to terms with the need to make this also a journey of discovery for the reader, and not only about showing how knowledgeable the writer thinks he is. Kaplan still has some maturing to do and this book is a good step in this process.

This is a good book and I recommend it.