A Cultural History of Serbia: Tradition and Change is a sweeping longue durée history of Serbia from the medieval period to the present. It stands apart from much of the existing scholarship on the region in two major ways. First, it tells the story of Serbia’s past though its culture and society rather than through its politics and economics. Second, it offers even coverage of history instead of a focus on recent conflicts. As an expert in the region’s language, literature, and culture, David Norris is exceptionally equipped to write this text. A Cultural History of Serbia follows in a long line of his contributions that have shaped the field.

Norris offers a thick description of Serbia’s culture that tracks the development of things like language, literature, poetry, the visual arts, dress, architecture, film, and popular entertainment across time. He certainly integrates essential political, economic, and intellectual narratives for the sake of context, but these parts of history are refreshingly de-emphasized. The premise of the text, as Norris explains in the brief introduction, is to showcase culture. “Culture,” he writes, “provides the mechanism through which human beings see the world and by which they interpret it” (2), and, throughout the book, he offers convincing evidence that this is the case. His work especially shines in vignettes that bring Serbia’s cultural history to life. For instance, he traces the development of the Kosovo Myth, analyzes the portraits of Prince Mihailo (including one by Belgrade’s photography pioneer Anastas Jovanović), discusses the creative output of Isidora Sekulić, chronicles the vibrant social world of the Society of the Friends of Art “Cvijeta Zuzorić,” and writes about Black Wave film and New Wave music. Through these stories, A Cultural History of Serbia is a delightful exploration of the continuities and changes of Serbia’s culture across the centuries.

Norris commands the telling of Serbia’s history and, critically, allows it to stand on its own terms. In part due to a lack of accessible sources and in part due to orientalist misconceptions about the region, scholars have often narrated the Balkans in relation to the west. Norris has long challenged this in his work, and A Cultural History of Serbia is an exemplar of what the region’s history could—and should—be like. At the outset of the book, Norris underlines his interest in studying “traditions,” noting that this concept is often misunderstood to encompass old practices, outdated beliefs, or conservative views posited in opposition to modernity. In studies of the Balkans, he tells us, a study of traditions often means a focus on folk culture, religion, and nationalism. For Norris, however, traditions are links between the past and the present or “constructed and recontextualized symbolic forms and social practices, reinvented in some way for each generation” (4). In A Cultural History of Serbia, he does not shy away from writing about folk epics, the Orthodox Church, and nationalist violence, but he additionally considers their dynamic role in society alongside other many other symbolic forms and social practices.

A Cultural History of Serbia continues in the trajectory of Norris’s writing over the last several decades. The text also skillfully weaves in the contributions of the region’s key interdisciplinary scholars to produce a synthetic, chronological telling of history. The book might have benefited from a more robust introduction to frame the text and a conclusion to pull together the major trends of Serbia’s cultural traditions. Barring that, A Cultural History of Serbia is a valuable contribution to the field, notable in its shift away from the usual narratives in the history of the Balkans in both content and temporal focus. Norris offers readers a lens for understanding the importance of culture without drowning it out with politics just as he prioritizes the different eras of Serbia’s history without overshadowing them by war. This is a book I very much would have liked to have existed twenty years ago when I was just beginning to study history. It is a great thing it exists for scholars and students today.