About this item
Since the Turks first shattered the glory of the French crusaders in 1396, the Ottoman Empire has exerted a long, strong pull on Western minds. For six hundred years, the Empire swelled and declined. Islamic, martial, civilized, and tolerant, in three centuries it advanced from the dusty foothills of Anatolia to rule on the Danube and the Nile; at the Empire's height, Indian rajahs and the kings of France beseeched its aid. For the next three hundred years the Empire seemed ready to collapse, a prodigy of survival and decay. Early in the twentieth century it fell. In this dazzling evocation of its power, Jason Goodwin explores how the Ottomans rose and how, against all odds, they lingered on. In the process he unfolds a sequence of mysteries, triumphs, treasures, and terrors unknown to most American readers.
About the Author
Jason Goodwin, novelist and historian, writes the best-selling Yashim detective series set in 1830s Istanbul. The first in the series, The Janissary Tree, won the coveted EdgarAllen Poe Award for Best Novel in 2007, and the series has appeared in over 40 languages.'When you read a historical mystery by Jason Goodwin,' writes Marylin Stasio in The New York Times Book Review, 'you take a magic carpet ride to the most exotic place on earth.'He has written award-winning books of travel and history, notably Lords of the Horizons: A History of the Ottoman Empire. Read it to discover why Time Out called it 'perhaps the most readable history ever written on anything.'Jason's love-affair with Turkey was kindled in 1990 when he and Kate, his partner, walked 2000 miles across eastern Europe, from Gdansk to Istanbul. The award-winning 'On Foot to the Golden Horn' tells the story of that journey in a year of change, and will shortly be re-issued on Kindle.He lives in Dorset, on the south coast of England, with Kate and their four children.
