"In this [book, the author] turns his perceptive eye to the Adriatic Sea, a region that has always been a crossroads in trade, culture, and ideas. [He] undertakes a journey through Italy and the Balkan countries lining the Adriatic to reveal much more to the region than news stories about resurgent populism or the refugee crisis let on. As he travels, the stark truth emerges that the age of populism is merely an epiphenomenon--a swan song for the age of nationalism itself--and that the future of Europe lies in a different direction entirely, as he observes a breaking down of the distinctions between east and west, a return to alignments of an earlier era. Traveling the coastline from Italy to Slovenia and Croatia, to Montenegro to Albania and to Greece, he engages ... cultural criticism and an urgent study of Europe as a whole, seen through the lens of these countries"--Publisher marketing.