Macedonia: What Does It Take to Stop a War? Paperback – 26 June 2007

Part travelogue, all politics; Robeson's journey to Macedonia is a collection of tense encounters and heated but healthy debates about the history and ethnicity of a peaceful yet volatile state.

Great graphic novel of you like history and traveling.

In Heather Roberson, Harvey Pekar has found hope for the future. Maybe this will be the first of several episodes leading to Roberson's becoming Secretary of State, or at least US ambassador. She is the perfect protagonist for this Balkan adventure, a midwesterner who knows the difference between averting confrontation and peace, well coached by her UC Berkeley professors she says modestly when someone compliments her insight. She's neither starry-eyed nor cynical, but she's impatient with evasion. And with young men who think she's courting too much danger, a running subtext.Macedonia avoided the wars that broke out in other parts of the former Yugoslavia, and Roberson wants to know how. To say it's at peace would be a lie. Nevertheless, Roberson, who trusts heavily in the kindness of strangers, likes it there. It's a messy proposition--long-standing ethnic discrimination, a tottering new judicial system, intermittent electricity--but without a lot of preconceived notions, she struggles to listen to everyone she meets from law professors to street artists.The graphic format works here, telegraphing the annoyances young women alone abroad often experience; giving some idea of how people dress, travel and what they eat; capturing through dialogue the different experiences of Macedonians who cannot leave their country and visiting workers from Europe and the United States. Will this get us into the European Union? seems to be every local's favorite question, so powerful is their urge to leave behind their isolation. Since, as Roberson points out, there's very little literature about modern Macedonia and the story is constantly changing, this book is a valuable "snapshot" of a nation we should support when we talk about "spreading democracy."Roberson finds kinship with Macedonia's people, who, she says, are direct and caring just like the folks in her native Missouri. And she finds other common ground: they have a gun problem, they are trying to address the effects of years of ethnic discrimination, and there's government corruption.Something important happened (or failed to happen) in Macedonia in the 1990s. Pekar and Roberson and their illustrator, Ed Piskor, have laid the groundwork for discussion. Let it continue.

I'd like to give this more stars but the inability to zoom in the image have me a headache with the right lettering. It's fun seeing Ed's first professional comicbook work

I'm a fan of Ed Piskor and Harvey Pekar. This book misses both of their strengths since it is too far from the stories they usually tell. They're both out of their comfort zone on this one. I am not sure how they worked with Heather Roberson but the book seems to struggle to tell the story efficiently. I'm less familiar with what her voice should sound like in a graphic work, but this struggles to be consistent.Piskor and Pekar have better collaborations.The subject matter is unique as a graphic novel creative non-fiction work exploring a region of the world intimately. In that way it is similar to Guy Delisle's Pyongyang, but less cohesively aware of its own form.