200 Int. J. Middle East Stud. 47 (2015) Chapter 6 features another significant scholarly innovation: in light of her findings that Iraqi Jews were fully “immersed in Iraqi life and culture,” Bashkin argues that the dislocation of Iraqi Jews beginning in the early 1950s under the pressure of a denationalization law was anomalous rather than inevitable. She offers a detailed analysis of this seemingly “puzzling” event (p. 183). Three factors combined to bring about the tragic collapse of the Iraqi Jewish community: the emergence of a viciously anti-Semitic right-wing press, the Iraqi government’s fear of communism, and the temporary popularity of the idea (among both Arab nationalists and Zionists) of a population exchange between Iraqi Jews and Palestinians. New Babylonians is a significant addition to the literature on the social and political history of modern Iraq. Bashkin’s frameworks and sources also make the work relevant beyond this literature. Indeed, her book is essential reading for those interested in nation building and the relationship between identity and politics in the modern Middle East. It will also be of interest to scholars studying Jews in the Arab world, Arab-Israeli relations, and the histories of communist parties in the Middle East. Due to its accessible prose and availability in paperback, New Babylonians would be an appropriate text to assign in graduate and advanced undergraduate seminars addressing any of these topics. IPEK YOSMAO ˘ GLU, Blood Ties: Religion, Violence, and the Politics of Nationhood in Ottoman Macedonia, 1878–1908 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2014). Pp. 320. $85.00 cloth, $29.95 paper. REVIEWED BY ISA BLUMI, Department of History, Georgia State University, Atlanta, Ga.; e-mail: iblumi@gsu.edu doi:10.1017/S002074381400169X Since the 1990s scholars have been challenging the myths of the modern nation-state in the Balkans. The reasons for the violence that erupted in the region at the end of the 19th century (or in the 1990s), they have claimed, are far more complex than the basic fact of “different” people living side-by-side. Unfortunately, in making these points, scholars have largely ignored the considerable archival resources available in Istanbul. With Blood Ties, Ipek Yosmao˘ glu succeeds where others have failed. Over six information-rich chapters, she harnesses hitherto neglected primary resources to develop valuable corrections to the Macedonian part of the larger late 19th- century Balkans story. Covering the period between 1878 and 1908, Yosmao˘ glu reconsiders how competing inter- ests, including those of the “Great Powers,” directly affected the experiences of people living in “strategic” regions. In doing so, she convincingly challenges scholarly conventions about the reli- gious, sectarian, and linguistic “differences” purportedly afflicting the region. Drawing heavily on Stathis Kalyvas’ theory of how political violence forges social and political identities, Yosmao˘ glu claims that these “differences” were actually “constructed and compounded” during a period of transformation inaugurated by the empire’s defeat to the Russians in 1877. After this war, violence in the Balkans became the “ultimate catalyst” for intercommunal differentiation. It is here that Yosmao˘ glu is especially convincing. She explains how leading up to 1908 the manipulative use of violence by certain parties resulted in the formation of what she characterizes as “patterns of fierce dissociation.” Laying the groundwork for the emergence of this violence are three well-written chapters in which Yosmao˘ glu explains her underlying theoretical points. The author usefully identi- fies a number of reifying epistemologies—reinforced by cartographic conventions, education (which she assumes is a means to indoctrinate members of society), and narrowing spiritual