This edited volume of nineteen essays fills a gap in the scholarly literature on post-independent Croatia. The collection offers articles on a wide range of topics, including politics, economics, war, culture, society, and selected foreign relations. Its major strengths include essays that reevaluate and reinterpret aspects of the country's post-Communist experience, adding needed analysis that transcends the often formulaic writing of the Tuđman era. However, the volume has a number of major weaknesses that detract from the overall quality and impact of the collection.

Three essays stand out as both provocative and exemplary. Sabrina Ramet's essay is one of the best of the collection, providing an interesting and well-documented narrative that challenges Western scholarly and journalistic (mis)perceptions of Croatian politics. Ramet's analysis disputes much of the accepted wisdom that paints Franjo Tuđman's presidential rule and the 1991–1995 war solely in negative colors. It also offers an excellent description of the government and corruption of the 1990s and illustrates the persistence of the Tuđman legacy on succeeding governments. James Sadkovich's essay, which will ruffle some feathers, provocatively argues that Tuđman's life as an intellectual shaped his political vision and ultimately his rule. This interpretation challenges contemporary scholarship that often uncritically paints Tuđman as a Fascist or a “lesser Milošević,” adding analytical complexity lacking in many works on the late president. Vjeran Pavlaković's essay provides an admirable analysis of Croatia's relationship with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and the European Union. The only real weakness is his “either-or” position on Croatia's polity: either Croats fully support Western liberal democracy or they support an agenda based on corruption, intolerance, and nationalism, with no room for a middle ground or the myriad other choices on this continuum.

Dunja Melčić's essay is perhaps the most controversial and uneven of the lot. Melčić delves into the ethnopolitics of scholarship on the region, suggesting that Western scholarly prejudice toward Yugoslavia negatively influences analysis of the region. She takes to task the tone and implications of Robert M. Hayden's dismissal of scholarly work by Serbs and Croats on Yugoslavia and the region as biased attempts to defend their nations' or nationalist policy. Although convincingly arguing this point at the essay's beginning, Melčić mires herself in so many contentious and unsupported claims that her argument soon falls apart. Deftly challenging orthodox scholarly conceptions about Tuđman, she tries to debunk the “myth” of Croatia's agreement to a partition of Bosnia. Here her argument suffers some logical fallacies and the misuse of evidence, of which she accuses other scholars. Her essay is also riddled with easily corrected editing mistakes.

Gordana Crnković, in examining nonnationalist culture and literature, offers two essays of varying quality. The first is on nonnationalist cultural attempts to connect Croatian youth and Yugoslav cultural influences. Unfortunately, the article only takes into account university culture in Zagreb without widening its scope. Moreover, Crnković's argument is more political than analytical (which is a problem for other essays in the “Society and Culture” section of the book) and makes unconvincing generalizations about youth culture. Crnković's second essay on antinationalist Croatian writers is nicely written and argued. However, it too suffers from an overtly political and biased argument against anything national or nationalist. Although the article provides an excellent analysis and description of the works of these authors, the conclusion and bias are disappointing.

The two most disappointing articles in this collection are Dean Vuletić's on the gay community in Croatia and Maple Razsa's on anarchist movements. Although both essays offer valuable information and analysis on very small subsections of Croatian society, their appropriateness for this collection is questionable. Instead, essays on larger and more visible antinationalist political or social groups would have offered readers a broader picture of activist, nonnationalist society.

Although the remaining essays vary in analytical and rhetorical quality, the volume as a whole would have benefited from the inclusion of an article devoted to regionalism in Croatia and one on nationalist culture that would balance the overemphasis on antinational culture and social movements. The inclusion of such articles would have provided a more rounded examination of Croatia after 1990 useful to an unfamiliar audience or a newer researcher.