Anthony D. Smith (1) (1939–2016)

Had to read this book for my Nationalism and Ethnic Conflict class... not sure if it is intended as a primer for newcomers to the subject, but it was an incredibly dense text. There were parts of it that I liked and that I thought were explained very clearly and effectively, but other parts of the text were difficult to grasp. I found myself having to reread sections over and over and over again, often after periods of a few hours, before I came to even a marginal understanding of what he was talking about. A lot of the book is in regards to the semantics of nation, nationalism, ethnies, etc. Smith is also clearly an outstanding academic and authority on the topic and made countless references to other scholars and writings on the subject, which were all entirely lost on me. Hoping that the class discussion will shed a bit more light on the text. Happily for me, all of my other classmates have thus far agreed that the text was a difficult one to read and that they too had to reread passages several times.… (plus d'informations)