Lords of the Horizons: A History of the Ottoman Empire

Rating:
Summary: A disappointment
Review: Ceremony, the reviewer below, did a good job on this book. It is very disappointing. My thought while reading it was I was surprised it was in print. I was looking for a nonacademic history of the Ottoman Empire, sort of like the book that's described in the editorial blurbs above, that would be enjoyable to read and a good introduction to the subject. Instead, it's pretty much as ceremony described it. What was most irritating was the prose, which is maddeningly difficult to follow, know-it-all and filled with pointlessly arcane allusions. GO ELSEWHERE.

Rating:
Summary: Surprised it's in print
Review: Ceremony, the reviewer below, did a good job on this book. It is very disappointing. My thought while reading it was I was surprised it was in print. I was looking for a nonacademic history of the Ottoman Empire, sort of like the book that's described in the editorial blurbs above, that would be enjoyable to read and a good introduction to the subject. Instead, it's pretty much as ceremony described it. What was most irritating was the prose, which is maddeningly difficult to follow, know-it-all and filled with pointlessly arcane allusions. GO ELSEWHERE.

Rating:
Summary: Do you like Robert Kaplan's travel writing?
Review: I am in no mood to write a review except that a few ill-humored people have taken it on themselves to trash this wonderful book and I couldn't let it slide.
The book was a fortuitous find, an excellent read during a recent trip to Turkey. I've lived there half my life and I have not -- and this is not an exaggeration -- read a more enjoyable history of the Ottomans. It does not trot out a bleak ration of significant events, coming down more on the side of observations of daily (or palace) life and a good story, allowing the reader to get a sense of what the empire was truly like. So, instead of a catalogue of Ottoman dealings with the Greek Isles, you get one particular event from Chios under the Venetians but it is told wonderfully and hints at so much more. It's like La Fontaine versus a treatise on ethics: both can impart the same lessons but you have a heck of a better time reading the first. This book evokes a mood rather than poke you in the eye with its points.

Even though the pace is leisurely, the book still feels economical, with amazing anecdotes and observations that hint at a very mature understanding of the subject. While reading it, I felt like a kid who's devouring his first book on magic and can't wait to try the tricks on his friends; in this case, relate the stories to friends and family who were just as amazed as I was and just as incredulous because they were fed the same boring official history crap during their school years. I've read books in Turkish that shone a different light on the subject but again none as fascinating a read as this.

It is possible that someone who has no prior knowledge of the lands or people might find it difficult to get a handle on things but I bet they would still enjoy the experience.

It does indeed feel like a travel book but only the best kind -- you travel both across the landscape and over time. If you enjoy the writing of Robert Kaplan, for example, you are in for a treat.

Rating:
Summary: A disappointment
Review: I bought this book to read as a sort of sequel to "A Short Histroy of Byzantium," and found it as dissappointing as "Byzantium" was satisfying. Perhaps I expected something else, but it's certainly no way to learn about Ottoman history. It glides through the first centuries of the Ottomans without any detail or coherence, then dwells on the fall of Constantinople with virtually no context. That's where I quit reading. I found the two previous reviews apt, but I wish I had read them before I bought the book. At least it was on remainder. This book is also a cautionary tale about relying on blurbs from a publication for which the author is a contributor.

Rating:
Summary: My Apologies
Review: I must have been drunk when I wrote this book. There was no "Ottoman Empire". You have been cruelly deluded.

Rating:
Summary: Inaccurate title, unreadable book
Review: This book bills itself as a "history of the Ottoman Empire," which it most emphatically is not. Instead, it sort of veers between being an informal history and a travel book, but it does neither of these things well. The author is not a historian, but a travel writer, and the book is structured as sort of a historical musing on certain places, loosely fit into an overall narrative of the rise and fall of the Ottoman Empire. While this still makes the title inaccurate, it could have at least been interesting had it been done well. Unfortunately, the book suffers tremendously on several counts.

First, it's poorly written. The book tends to drift from topic to topic, sometimes between sentences, making it difficult to follow and destroying any narrative interest before it gets started. It's almost as though the author were documenting his thoughts as he stood at some historical point of interest. The prose itself attempts to be clever but doesn't succeed. Comments such as "the borders became soft as yoghurt, which the Tatars liked to eat" not only make the book impossible to take seriously, but offer the reader endless pointless details which are neither good history (since they are irrelevant) nor good travel observations (because they are not interesting).

Second, the historical accounts tend to read as a simple recounting of the events in question, without any real discussion of the political, social, or ethnographic context, and even so they skip wildly from event to event, with seemingly random elaboration on apparently minor details. The 1683 siege of Vienna, for example, reads like a compilation of people's diaries without regard for what facts actually contribute to an understanding of the events involved. As a history it's vague, incomplete, and completely useless. Often, the author simply spends paragraphs generalizing about things that the participants may or may not have thought, or how certainly places may have looked or may have made some people feel at the time. This doesn't belong in a history, and doesn't work as travel writing because for the most part it's boring and trivial and the prose is that of a smart-aleck.

The book is simply painful to read. Even a nine-hour overseas plane flight with no other reading matter available was insufficient to get me to complete it. The 75% I was able to get through, however, was remarkably consistent, so it's unlikely the remainder is different.

Avoid.

Rating:
Summary: Inaccurate title, unreadable book
Review: This book bills itself as a "history of the Ottoman Empire," which it most emphatically is not. Instead, it sort of veers between being an informal history and a travel book, but it does neither of these things well. The author is not a historian, but a travel writer, and the book is structured as sort of a historical musing on certain places, loosely fit into an overall narrative of the rise and fall of the Ottoman Empire. While this still makes the title inaccurate, it could have at least been interesting had it been done well. Unfortunately, the book suffers tremendously on several counts.

First, it's poorly written. The book tends to drift from topic to topic, sometimes between sentences, making it difficult to follow and destroying any narrative interest before it gets started. It's almost as though the author were documenting his thoughts as he stood at some historical point of interest. The prose itself attempts to be clever but doesn't succeed. Comments such as "the borders became soft as yoghurt, which the Tatars liked to eat" not only make the book impossible to take seriously, but offer the reader endless pointless details which are neither good history (since they are irrelevant) nor good travel observations (because they are not interesting).

Second, the historical accounts tend to read as a simple recounting of the events in question, without any real discussion of the political, social, or ethnographic context, and even so they skip wildly from event to event, with seemingly random elaboration on apparently minor details. The 1683 siege of Vienna, for example, reads like a compilation of people's diaries without regard for what facts actually contribute to an understanding of the events involved. As a history it's vague, incomplete, and completely useless. Often, the author simply spends paragraphs generalizing about things that the participants may or may not have thought, or how certainly places may have looked or may have made some people feel at the time. This doesn't belong in a history, and doesn't work as travel writing because for the most part it's boring and trivial and the prose is that of a smart-aleck.

The book is simply painful to read. Even a nine-hour overseas plane flight with no other reading matter available was insufficient to get me to complete it. The 75% I was able to get through, however, was remarkably consistent, so it's unlikely the remainder is different.

Avoid.

Rating:
Summary: Depends what you are looking for
Review: This is not 'A history of the Ottoman Empire' along the lines of a coursebook for oriental studies 101. Nor is it a work of travel literature destined to rank with Lawrence Durrell or Graham Greene. It is simply an interesting read, to be stuck in your case or pack on your trip around Turkey. Especially if your previous knowlege of the Ottomans or Turkey in general was limited. If it reads like a series of good newspaper supplement articles - well that is what the author writes. Take a look at his other titles and get the picture. I found it to be an informative entertaining overview.