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3.97 AVERAGE
3.97 AVERAGE
Interesting content, but at times didn't hold my attention.
King centers his narrative about the chaotic aftermath of WWI in the collapsing Ottoman Empire on the Pera Palace, a Victorian hotel used by the Orient Express. The possession of a Greek-speaking entrepreneur, it was taken as British headquarters during the occupation of Istanbul, its grounds used to house a wave of White Russians (including perhaps the only black White Russian--a skilled headwaiter from Mississippi who had been in charge of the swankiest restaurant in Moscow), while the neighborhood hosted a mutual aid society for former palace eunuchs and courtesans. The Pera then evolved into the center of Ataturk's political rise, despite the official location of the capital in Ankara. King has an eye for juicy anecdotes, and he humanizes the mass forced migrations of the Lausanne treaty while providing background on the complex history of the religious and political legacy of the Ottoman Empire. The only real drawback to this book is that the endnotes are those awful "quotes from the sentences" kind that make it extremely difficult to see where he got the good stuff from.
They say "don't judge a book by its cover" and let me just say: never has it been more true. This book was disappointingly hetero.
jk/but srsly
Well written, well researched, and all around a decent read.
jk/but srsly
Well written, well researched, and all around a decent read.
So glad I managed to read this before the series' Greek translation was assigned to me!
Nice historical survey of Istanbul (and by extension, modern Turkey) spanning the fall of the Ottoman Empire through WW2. Not great, but held my interest and made me long to for a return visit.
I started reading this book for a college paper that I was writing and I found it so interesting that I kept reading even though I finished the paper (and got an A).
Mr. King's writing is very evocative and his descriptions of locations made me feel as if I was actually there.
Mr. King's writing is very evocative and his descriptions of locations made me feel as if I was actually there.
Using the Pera Palace (a special locality in a special metropolis), Charles King uses the hotel as a focus for an exploration of the birth of modern Istanbul. He tells a tale well and is an adept manager of tangents. The hotel is fascinating in its own regard, but as a mechanism to draw together the disparate tales of individuals and movements that came together during this hinge time in Turkish history, the author brings unique colour and atmosphere to the telling. Ripe with factoids and with special stories that draw the reader into a place in both geography and time, King delivers engagement and elucidation in quell measure and moves beyond something that could have been dry chronology into a spellbinding tapestry.
I rarely read non-fiction and before reading this book, I didn’t know a thing about the history of Istanbul or Turkey. I’m genuinely impressed about how captivating this book was. This will stick in my mind for a long time. Educational and gripping at the same time. Now to decide whether I want to read another book about Istanbul or by Charles King next …
This book really scratched a lot of the right itches for me. Beyond connecting many dots of various historical interests of mine, and helping me dig back into the world of historical scholarship I pursued when I got my MA in Middle Eastern History, it is also one of the best non-fiction books I have ever read.
Essentially, this book is a history of the period from WWI to WWII, but from the vantage point of Istanbul. For that reason, this book is important for shifting our view of history to a new vantage point, enabling us to see things from a perspective we would not otherwise. This book is really also essential reading for understanding the 20th century in general. Most of the major changes of the 20th century that we will look back on and see as significant come up in this book, and from a lens that us western folks usually do not look through.
I was in Istanbul for a few days back in the spring of 2005, which made this book very much more real to me. My masters thesis was on an American missionary in Syria/Lebanon during the late Ottoman period, so I had to read up a lot on the tanzimat reforms during Abdul Hamid II. Overall, this book brought a lot of my grad school work back to me (I finished in 2008, so it's been a while now).
Some of the topics that this book helped me learn more about that have been on my "need to know more about list" include, but are not limited to, White Russians and what happened to them after the Russian Revolution, the population exchanges between Greeks and Muslims in the years after WWI, the emergence of Kemalism, the iconography of the Hagia Sophia, and efforts to save Jewish refugees and get them to Palestine during WWII. How many books enable to you read about the first Muslim Miss Universe and Joseph Goebbels visiting Istanbul within a few pages of each other? If that sounds appetizing to you, make a bee line to this book. It is certainly good enough that I will read it again in the future.
Essentially, this book is a history of the period from WWI to WWII, but from the vantage point of Istanbul. For that reason, this book is important for shifting our view of history to a new vantage point, enabling us to see things from a perspective we would not otherwise. This book is really also essential reading for understanding the 20th century in general. Most of the major changes of the 20th century that we will look back on and see as significant come up in this book, and from a lens that us western folks usually do not look through.
I was in Istanbul for a few days back in the spring of 2005, which made this book very much more real to me. My masters thesis was on an American missionary in Syria/Lebanon during the late Ottoman period, so I had to read up a lot on the tanzimat reforms during Abdul Hamid II. Overall, this book brought a lot of my grad school work back to me (I finished in 2008, so it's been a while now).
Some of the topics that this book helped me learn more about that have been on my "need to know more about list" include, but are not limited to, White Russians and what happened to them after the Russian Revolution, the population exchanges between Greeks and Muslims in the years after WWI, the emergence of Kemalism, the iconography of the Hagia Sophia, and efforts to save Jewish refugees and get them to Palestine during WWII. How many books enable to you read about the first Muslim Miss Universe and Joseph Goebbels visiting Istanbul within a few pages of each other? If that sounds appetizing to you, make a bee line to this book. It is certainly good enough that I will read it again in the future.