Realm of the Black Mountain - Elizabeth Roberts

Montenegro was admitted to the UN as its 192nd member in June 2006, thus recovering the independence it had lost nearly 90 years earlier at the Versailles Peace Conference. This is the first full-length history of the country in English for a century, traces the history of the tiny Balkan state from its earliest roots in the medieval empire of Zeta through its consistently ambiguous and frequently problematic relationship with its larger neighbour Serbia, the emergence of a priest/warrior ruler in the shape of the Vladika and its emergence from Ottoman suzerainty state at the Congress of Berlin. More recently, the book focuses on its troubled 20th century history, its prominent role in the Balkan wars, its unique deletion from world maps as an independent state despite being on the winning side in the Great War, its ignominious role in the wars leading to the disintegration of Yugoslavia and its final remergence as a member of the international community on the anniversary of the Battle of Kosovo in 2006.