Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Balkan Idols: Religion and Nationalism in Yugoslav States


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was keep.    Sandstein   22:02, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Balkan Idols: Religion and Nationalism in Yugoslav States

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I'm getting deja vu from a book I nommed for this process yesterday; the entire thing seems to be enticing me to buy a book with no actual notability whatsoever, complete with positive reviews and a link to more pro-this-boook-read-it-you-must type content. Seems unsavable to me. Blood Red Sandman (Talk)   (Contribs) 20:40, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep. The article is not in great shape and needs some cleaning up and to have references added. However, the book does appear notable per WP:BK even if the case is not very strong. GoogleScholar returns 61 hits. There were at least three in-depth reviews (all positive) that I was able to find: Slavic Review, Vol. 63, No. 1 (Spring, 2004), pp. 169-170 [I got it from J-STOR], Journal of Southern Europe & the Balkans, Aug2003, Vol. 5 Issue 2, p262-263; Journal of the American Academy of Religion 2004 72(4):1059-1061. These are in-depth reviews that describe the book as a significant work. Also, Oxford University Press is a highly respected academic publishing house and the fact that the book was published there should be taken into account as well. Nsk92 (talk) 21:19, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
 * I have added a few references to reviews of the book to the main article. Nsk92 (talk) 21:54, 10 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Delete unless more independent coverage of the book can be cited. The reviews in themselves are insufficient to satisfy WP:BK, #1. While the cited reviews are indeed reviews that partially satisfy the criterion, all I can find from them are a slight overview of the book's contents and not enough of the "sufficient critical commentary to allow the article to grow past a simple plot summary," or, in this case, an analysis of the contents of the nonfiction book. Without that analysis (or anything indicating the importance of the book in the appropriate field of study), there really isn't much there in the article, and it comes across as a promotional blurb. While Oxford University Press is a respected publisher in academia, not every volume it prints would be worthy of its own article, but I hope to be able to see enough in here to make this worthy of keeping. B.Wind (talk) 04:48, 11 May 2008 (UTC)
 * First, I found a couple of more academic reviews of the book, both freely available electronically and have added them to the article: in Religion and Society in Central and Eastern Europe, Volume 2, 2006 and Global Review of Ethnopolitics, Vol. 3, no. 3-4, March-June 2004 These are fairly in-depth reviews that discuss the book and its significance in detail.
 * Second, I would disagree with your characterization of the other reviews listed. I think they are sufficiently in-depth analytical discussions of the book that go substantially beyond a superficial plot summary. But people should try to read them and judge for themselves. There are also perfunctory reviews of this book, such as this one in Foreign Affairs. But I think that the reviews referenced in the article are not in that category
 * Third, we are talking about reviews in academic journals rather than in popular press. Academic reviews are always restrained and are supposed to be written from a neutral point of view (I have written my share of them in mathematics for MathSciNet). So when people do make evaluative comments in academic reviews, they are more significant and meaningful than the popular press ones.
 * Fourth, I would also note that GoogleScholar is notoriously terrible in finding citations related to humanities, such as political science (This often comes up in AfD discussions of WP articles about academics). So the fact that there were 61 hits here is significant. GoogleBooks gives another 21 hits . Nsk92 (talk) 14:12, 11 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Keep. Whether the reviews cited are positive, negative, neutral or mixed has no bearing on on notability. What matters is that they exist. Phil Bridger (talk) 20:07, 11 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep reviews and citations are what make a book notable. This many citations for a recently published academic book in GS is highly significant. sop are reviews in the major journals, when they're more than just listings of new books. They do not bother giving full reviews to trivial books. DGG (talk) 01:10, 12 May 2008 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.