A History of the Ottoman Empire Kindle Edition

very informative. An easy read. Gave as gift.

The description of this book on Amazon and GoodReads is 100% accurate. The book is well written, informative, and takes a humanistic approach to its subject matter that I enjoyed and often find lacking in many history books. The approach gives the reader a glimpse into the national soul of an Ottoman citizen, particularly a citizen of Turkish decent. One comes away with a sense of the character of an Ottoman citizen and the Ottoman world outlook that also helps explain how the Empire was able to govern such a diverse group of peoples for so long.However, be warned that this is not intended as an introduction to the history of the Ottoman Empire. As advertised, if you consider it as a college history textbook, it is designed for graduate and advanced undergraduate students. I do not think it is as accessible to the general reader as some of the academic reviewers suggest. The author assumes the reader has a basic understanding of the Empire's general formation, territory, diverse cultures and place in Islamic history. If one does not have such a basic understanding, one may spend a lot of time looking up events and people on Google to get a framework to better understand the context of what you are reading.

Great book concise well written great story telling

I was assigned this book for a college course.I like the prose- it's very readable. The images on pages frequently don't relate to the given text, though. Page 120, for example, is an image of one of the Pergamum Urns. The only place those urns are mentioned in the book is in that image.I have two suggestions for the editors/author.Please use more maps and include at least one map of the empire at its peak, with prominent cities labeled. A map section in the appendix with maps of the empire over the centuries (eg 14th century, 15th c, 16th...) would be helpful. Five of the ten maps in the text only look at Anatolia.I would have appreciated a timeline of significant events and people. I sometimes got lost in the sections- maybe it was my unfamiliarity with Ottoman Turkish names- and felt that a timeline would have been a nice reference.

It reads like a textbook. The back cover says it is a textbook. I did not know that before I ordered it.If you want a textbook, it is a good one. It's educational. It could use a glossary, though.

This is a very lucidly written book that explains the history of the Ottoman Empire from its early mystical past to the rise and glory in the Ottoman's crown jewel - Constantinople, and its eventual collapse after World War One. This book is written in a textbook style, but is very comprehensive in that it covers the social life, the rise of the Islamic forces, the wars, and the culture of the Ottomans. It sets out what the Ottomans replaced, what had gone, and what now remains. The only complaint one might have is that the book size is a trifle too big to carry around.

The book incorrectly refers to the civil war involving Ottoman Armenians as "genocide" while ignoring the bloody outcomes of Armenian revolts and attacks that claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of Turks and Kurds.

This book is very readable and rather enjoyable. However, it really is not a "history" of the Ottoman Empire, in that one would not be able to read this book and create a coherent outline of Ottoman history. Rather much of the book consists of a series of sketches. I was disappointed because I found the authors book, "The History of Turkey," very useful in outlining Turkish history.

It is quite heavy going in places but I have enjoyed reading it and it has definately expanded my rather limited knowledge of the Ottoman Empire

Scholarly, if a bit dry at times. Should be required reading though for anyone involved in creating foreign policy. A centuries old cultural mosaic whose dissolution following WW1, and the self serving machinations of those who most benefitted from it's collapse, resulted in the fractured Middle East of today. A fine example of what not to do.

Sadly I had to throw in the towel at the halfway point with this book. I am convinced the author knows his stuff but he failed to communicate much of it to this reader. A glossary would have been invaluable and a decent full page map at the start of the book would have helped to illustrate the geographical extent of the Ottoman Empire. All the illustrations in the book are monochrome which in itself is not a bad thing but I felt I was reading a volume that had been published around 1900; quaint but not exactly up to date. I had hoped for enlightenment but it was not to be.