ions and nationalities have a long lasting historical ethnic kernel? Or why worry whether these categories are just a product of modernity or mere constructs, and what role elites might have played within this process? Why discuss how ethnicity and nationhood came to be widely applied and accepted concepts or what the relationship of ethnicity, nationhood and nationalism might be? For Panayi the world is simple and theory just reflects simple truths that are evident for an unbiased scholar with a view for empirical realities and linear, not to say mechanistic, concepts in which reality can be framed and described. No surprise, then, to read that also the very concept of minority is easy and clear. "Perfect minorities," we read with astonishment, are "smaller than majorities, concentrate in particular locations, look outwardly different and lack power vis-a-vis the dominant population" (p. 9). Perhaps one should not be too critical of the author here for not going into theoretical depth when mainly having an undergraduate audience in mind and wanting to provide a book with a clear narrative and a factual basis to build upon. Thus, let me address the empirical parts of the book which make up sections three to four of the book that tries to give a systematic overview on postwar European. Taking a closer look at the book and its three key categories (dispersed, localized and immigrant minorities/refugees), one wonders if the proposed framework makes sense and has a high degree of explanatory power. I had certain doubts about the coherence of the categories and the way the author applied them. To give a few examples: in handling the cases of multiethnic Switzerland and Belgium, citing Flemings and Walloons or Swiss-Germans, Swiss-French, Swiss-Italians and Romansh all as minorities is not plausible. Why Romanian-Germans are listed as a dispersed minority whereas Romanian-Hungarians are localized is also not intelligible. The same is true fo...
