Blood and Belonging: Journeys Into the New Nationalism - Softcover

"Vivid and readable, [Blood and Belonging] provides unforgettable impressions of societies that are going in the wrong direction on the highway to brotherhood and unity." --David Fromkin, Book World

"An extraordinary guide, by a richly talented writer and reporter, to the pustular outbreaks of nationalism that keep marring the smooth complexion we expected the world to show after the Cold War. Ignatieff's eye for the heartbreaking detail makes the seeming madness of recent news stories comprehensible in human terms." --Robert Macneil

Until the end of the Cold War, the politics of national identity was confined to isolated incidents of ethnics strife and civil war in distant countries. Now, with the collapse of Communist regimes across Europe and the loosening pf the Cold War'd clamp on East-West relations, a surge of nationalism has swept the world stage. In Blood and Belonging, Ignatieff makes a thorough examination of why blood ties--inplaces as diverse as Yugoslavia, Kurdistan, Northern Ireland, Quebec, Germany, and the former Soviet republics--may be the definitive factor in international relation today. He asks how ethnic pride turned into ethnic cleansing, whether modern citizens can lay the ghosts of a warring past, why--and whether--a people need a state of their own, and why armed struggle might be justified. Blood and Belonging is a profound and searching look at one of the most complex issues of our time.