I have picked this up in used bookstores over a period of years, thumbed through it, then put it down, quite sure I did not have the time to give it.
Recently, I found it again (maybe the same copy picked up over and over again, since it was in the same used bookstore in the French Quarter I have been roaming since I was a teenager) and bought it this time. Hey why not; it's freakin' hot here right now...
It sits next to 3 or 4 others currently open, and it also comes on travel with me.. As a half/Pole (2 generations removed- I think; that's how removed we are), the story of Yugoslavia is fascinating and sorrowful to me.
In the book, West travels to Yugoslavia for a second time in the late 1930s, this time with her husband. For any reader, how she explains practical, maddening basic life in its humor and beauty and sadness in the stories and history is for anyone and everyone.
West takes us on a sweeping panoramic view of the physical and cultural majesty of the Kingdom, and along the way offers herself as a friendly aisle companion. She introduces us openly to her friends and her thoughts and opinions. I am gratified that it was written by a female writer who I can now added to the list of those teachers of practical observation and tone- Didion, Blixsen, Solnit, Di Prima, more too, but that gives you an idea where I think she belongs.

I am not even halfway done with the book, and I expect it might take me calendar years to add it to the finished pull-down menu of above, but I do not mind. I appreciate the sprawl and detail of this magnificent work, and like a beautiful mountain that I decided to climb, there is no value in haste.