Modern Greece: What everyone needs to know by Stathis Kalyvas

I decided it was most appropriate to absorb another book on "modern" Greece prior to our upcoming trip, this one by Stathis Kalyvas.  

Kalyvas takes a pragmatic approach to the subject in a very organized fashion, arranging the book in short sections of just a few pages each.  Every section poses a question, such as "What was the Greek nationalist movement?" or "What was the Metaxas regime?"

Written in a sequential manner, the punchy sections help break down the complicated history into comprehensible bites.

The overall position of the book is that modern Greece is typically not given enough credit for it's achievements.  Rather than thinking of Greece as a weak state as compared to western European nations, he posits that Greece is rather the most successful successor state to the Ottoman Empire, from which Greece was the first to achieve its freedom.

As just one example in support of this perspective, the book explains how Greece avoided becoming a puppet state of the Soviets, unlike most of it's northerly neighbors (Yugoslavia and Bulgaria) that also sprung from the Ottoman Empire.

A solid book that has helped further my understanding of modern Greece, an important achievement given that we leave for Greece tomorrow!