I think if I could figure out how to be a travel writer and make a living that way, I would. And books like this don't help matters (neither do re-runs of Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations- but that's beside the point.)* I can think of no job that would be more awesome that travelling the world and writing about the crazy, random, wonderful, odd, dangerous things that you see along the way.
And Michael J. Totten makes that old idealistic itch of mine itch that much harder because he's a good writer. (This post from way back when about the Ghost City of Cyprus bumped Cyprus up to one of my bucket list destinations. So did that paper I wrote back as an undergrad dissecting the Cyprus Conflict- a fascinating, fascinating subject that I knew nothing about.)
Where The West Ends chronicles his journeys through a variety of countries, starting in Iraqi Kurdistan and Turkey and winding up through Albania and Serbia before heading over to Georgia and the Caucuses and then Romania and finally Ukraine. Totten and his occasional travelling companion and buddy Sean drive into Iraqi Kurdistan like it's nothing- on a whim, in fact, just to find out what's going on. They drive into Kosovo and nearly end up in a dangerous Serb neighborhood of Pristina. They meet American soldiers, Albanians that love America and President Bush. They encounter hostility in the usual places (Serbia) and find love for America in places you wouldn't expect (Albania and Romania- both, apparently, ridiculously pro-American. As is Kosovo. I believe downtown Pristina has a statue of President Clinton, while Albania threw up a statue of Bush the Younger. That's right. Bush the Younger... he probably doesn't have a statue in the United States for cryin' out loud, but he's got one in Albania, by golly.)
Totten ventures into the Caucuses, visitng Georgia in the midst of the Russian invasion (and hops a taxi out to the Russian occupied town of Gori-- and almost manages to get there too before turning around and beating a hasty retreat back to Tblisi.) And finally, the book ends with a trip into Ukraine- ostensibly to check out the areas around Chernobyl, though as it turns, they don't make it there and instead end up taking a long, lonely trip down to the Crimea, where they really discover where the West ends.
To be honest, these 'dispatches from abroad' especially where The Balkans are concerned have been around forever. Rebecca West's Black Lamb, Grey Falcon probably remains one of the definitive books exploring what was then the country of Yugoslavia, but Robert Kaplan has dabbled here as well, with the excellent Balkan Ghosts- so Totten is travelling a path that's been fairly well travelled before, though I'd say his writing style lends a certain realism to his adventures. He's not painting a broad canvas or pretty metaphors of blood soaked mountains or haunted plains (Kaplan called his book Balkan Ghosts and there tended to be something ethereal about his writing in that book. Not to say that it wasn't well-written-- I enjoyed it immensely but it didn't drop you into the back seat of the car travelling throughout this region the way Totten does.) No, Totten brings you along for the ride- which makes Where The West Ends compulsively readable and enjoyable to boot.
This is the kind of foreign correspondant**, 'you are there' type of journalism I love. With so many networks cutting back on actual, real live foreign correspondants, it's awesome find someone who's willing to actually go to some of these messed up places and give you his best perspective on what's going on on what some of it might mean.
Overall: Totten is one of my 'must read' commentators on the Interwebs. If I see a link to an article of his float by, I click on it. He's an excellent writer, a straight shooter, a guy who's interest seems to be in informing you of facts on the ground- not analysis. He hearkens back to the old school foreign correspondant journalism of times past and this book, like so many of it's ilk aways makes me want to travel to some of these places- just so I, like him, can see it for myself. My Verdict: **** out of ****.
*Turns out that while No Reservations may be gone from Netflix (at least I can't find it.) Kitchen Confidential was available for Kindle. I'm already 36 pages in.
**Foreign correspondant is another job I'd love to have. Along with, weirdly enough, Air Traffic Controller.
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