This book is part of “The Greenwood Histories of the Modern Nations” and was written by Douglas A. Howard. This is the second Turkish history book I’ve reviewed. I think the first, “Turkey Unveiled,” is more colorful that the usual history book; the authors admit they are in love with the country. This book is more of what you would expect from a “nuts and bolts” history book, and it has some useful features. There is a quite useful timeline of historical events in the front of the book. There is a glossary of terms in the back that I found quite useful. All in all, I don’t think you could go wrong with reading either this book or “Turkey Unveiled” if you are interested in the country or want to learn about the country in preparation for a visit. Continue reading
Category Archives: Reviews
Turkey Unveiled, A History of Modern Turkey
The early parts of this book by Nicole and Hugh Pope are quite engaging. Turkey is described as a very popular tourist destination, and one couple we know said it was their favorite of several stops on their recent cruise. I recommend the book for people either interested in the country or who intend to visit. I challenge anyone to read the first page and not be intrigued. The authors say, “We still find it hard to pin down precisely when we fell in love with Turkey.” They then go through a list of endearing moments such as when a “…mustachioed fierce Turk’s face melted into an open and loving smile at the sight of a small baby.” Another is about the taxi driver who was a complete stranger but offered a loan to travelers finding themselves with no money at the end of a long ride. Other moments are not as comforting. A Turkish soldier who had gone out of his way to help strangers on a rainy night proudly said he was in charge of his unit’s torture section. There are other references to the reputation for brutality. The movie Midnight Express about the horrors experienced by an American in Turkish prisons after being arrested trying to smuggle drugs is a lasting contributor to the negative image of the country. Continue reading
Spending a Great American Fortune
Empty Mansions is a book about wealth and the eccentricity wealth enabled. Bill Dedman became interested in this story when he learned of a mansion in Connecticut kept in pristine condition by a staff that had never seen their employer. He learned this was not the only magnificent home kept, but never visited, by this particular heir. His research led him to one of her relatives, co-author Paul Clark Newell, Jr., who provided his twenty years of research into the family: documents, stories, and many pictures that fill the book. (The EPUB book is 13,229 KB.) Continue reading
A Family History of the Soviet Union
Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking by Anya Von Bremzen
“This is a work of non-fiction, woven from family anecdotes and historical facts spanning ten decades”, the author’s note begins. Von Bremzen’s family was diverse, including Muslims and Jews, a Turkistan feminist, a preservationist at Lenin’s tomb, a dissident, and a spy.
The Soviet Union was also wildly diverse, a group of nations and ethnicities forced together: “Such was the bomb of diversity that began to explode in the [1990s].”
Von Bremzen’s mother brought her to the U.S. at the age of 11, long before the fall of the Soviet state. They arrived in 1974 thanks to American-Jewish sponsors. Today she is a travel and cookbook writer who visits Russia and other former Soviet republics regularly. Von Bremzen decided to cook a meal to represent each decade of the Soviet Union and this forms a framework for her book. She heard family tales from her mother as they cooked together. Recipes for each decade are included in the back of the book, except for the 1940s, which is represented only by a war-time ration card.
Mother and daughter begin their cooking with the final decade of the czarist era. The main course is a fish dish: a rich, multi-layered pie of fish liver, sturgeon, onions, eggs, giblets, mushrooms, and dilled rice, all dripping with butter. Von Bremzen compares it to the Soviet version she remembered as a child in Moscow: a loaf of bread with a thin layer of ground meat or cabbage inside. This is typical of the book. Although organized by decade, Von Bremzen uses an informal, personal style and moves backwards and forwards through her own memories, family stories, and Soviet history. Continue reading
Great Empires, An Illustrated Atlas
I found this National Geographic book in the local library while searching for information about the Ottoman Empire. I read only that chapter and the one titled “Byzantium and the Arab World.” I did thumb through to look at the many colorful pictures and illustrations. The book presents a high level overview and often with little explanation. My interests in learning more about the Ottoman Empire were frustrated by the closing sentence that the “…once great empire had lost its way. But from its wreckage emerged a new nation, Turkey…” Nothing more is provided to explain what happened except for the closing lines that “…a democratic society that reached out to its old foes in Europe and forged close bonds with the West.” There is no mention of the fascinating story of how Mustafa Kemal and his supporters succeeded at ending the Empire to make the new country called Turkey. Continue reading
Ecstatic Nation – before, during, and after America’s Civil War
Since I recently read 1858, reviewed here, I thought Brenda Wineapple’s book Ecstatic Nation, Confidence, Crisis, and Compromise, 1848 – 1877 was a logical follow-up. It is fairly long at 526 pages, and the 74 pages of notes are connected to the text via by page number rather than footnotes.
The enormity of the Civil War continues to amaze and horrify me. Wineapple says the number of soldiers who died from a combination of battle and illness was recently revised upwards to over 750,000, “far greater than the number of men who perished or would perish in all other U.S. wars put together.” According to the count on www.militaryfactory.com , with Wineapple’s “recent revision”, that’s true. Continue reading