Review

Textbooks, Readers, and References

This 1998 publication will be a valuable reference resource to any teacher faced with the daunting prospect of trying to deal with the new configuration of the post-Cold War globe. The book fills the information gap between the textbook and the daily newspaper. Textbooks invariably become thin in dealing with the crucial changes of the 1990s, and the daily newspaper is likely to pick up the story at a current crisis, divorced from its antecedents. Minahan's work will help any teacher who is not an expert on these particular new states make the connections between past and present. The dictionary identifies and discusses twenty-five newly independent states. The states emerging from the former Soviet Union predominate, but the list also includes the Czech Republic; Slovakia; the new states of the Balkan region; and three states from Africa: Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Namibia. The list includes the trunk states (Russia, Yugoslavia, Ethiopia) as well as the new emerging states. As the title indicates, Minahan considers each of the states to be a miniature empire in itself, consisting of highly diverse ethnic, religious, and language groups. One of the fascinating features of each description is its breakdown of the population groups that comprise these new countries. The resulting lists are remarkable and highly informative and fully justify the label of "miniature empire." The description of each country includes simple and clear maps of the area and a brief discussion of the primary geographic features. The historical information provided for each state is particularly useful, reaching back into ancient history and moving briskly through the major historic stages before concentrating most heavily on the period since 1990. The descriptions include interesting details as well as the broad brush strokes necessary to cover a lot of material quickly. For example, the discussion of Bosnia and Herzegovina notes that the Jews of Bosnia, less than one percent of the population, found an early haven of tolerance in Bosnia, where they had never faced the experience of the ghetto as had occurred elsewhere in western Europe. The historical information on Azerbaijan describes the Azeri efforts with President Woodrow Wilson and the Paris Peace Conference after World War I. And in the description of the Ukraine, Minahan includes the fact that in 1996 the Ukraine was the third largest recipient of U.S. aid, coming after Egypt and Israel.	1
Minahan presents the broad, general patterns that surround these post-Cold War territories in his particularly helpful introduction to the book. Here he reconciles the seeming contradiction between a trend toward increasingly small "national" groups and the simultaneous tendency toward overarching agreements to link these independent entities through political, economic, or military agreements. Independence does not mean isolation. Rather it actually seems to foster new kinds of international relationships. Further, Minahan proposes that the pursuit of national self-determination, as evident in these new countries, represents the central element of democracy and the most enduring feature of the twentieth century. Minahan draws his statistical information from a wide variety of sources, listed at the end of the introduction. The list constitutes a useful bibliographical reference for student research projects. Similarly, the short bibliographies at the end of the discussion of each new state will be helpful for students and teachers alike. All of the references are to publications from the 1990s. The book will probably be most useful to teachers, but it offers interesting possibilities for special topics courses at the college level or perhaps for particularly able high school students. A seminar in the post-Cold War world could assign groups or individuals to investigate one of these new countries, beginning with Minahan's book and then proceeding to the internet or current periodicals to investigate the most recent developments. Another possibility for less sophisticated classes with more of a social studies orientation lies in Minahan's brief discussion of each new country's flag. What significance lies in the colors and symbols by which a new country chooses to identify itself? Minahan's book is a full and generous dictionary, in some ways closer to a mini-encyclopedia in its treatment of each of its chosen states. Its only drawback is that a work of this nature is quickly superseded by the rapid pace of new events. Nevertheless, a concise and coherent discussion of each of these countries, whatever the future may hold, is invaluable in bringing the blur of events of the last decade into focus, at least for a moment.	2
Armstrong Atlantic State University   Janet D. Stone

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