Best History of Turkey & the Ottoman empire

Suleiman the Magnificent, the Ottoman sultan, had expanded his empire from western Asia to southeastern Europe and North Africa. To secure control of the Mediterranean between these territories and launch an offensive into western Europe, Suleiman needed the small but strategically crucial island of Malta. But Suleiman’s attempt to take the island from the Holy Roman Empire’s Knights of St. John would emerge as one of the most famous and brutal military defeats in history. -- Kirkus Reviews ERNLE BRADFORD (1922-1986) was a prominent British historian specializing in the Mediterranean world and naval history.

Published with a new afterword from the author—the classic, bestselling account of how the modern Middle East was created. “Wonderful...No book published in recent years has more lasting relevance to our understanding of the Middle East.” ― Jack Miles, Los Angeles Book Review.

A New York Times Book Review Notable Book • Named a Best Book of the Year by New York Magazine and The Progressive "A deeply honest and brave portrait of of an individual sensibility reckoning with her country's violent role in the world." It would take leaving her home to discover what she came to think of as the two Americas: the country and its people, and the experience of American power around the world. Blending memoir, journalism, and history, and deeply attuned to the voices of those she met on her travels, Notes on a Foreign Country is a moving reflection on America’s place in the world. [Suzy Hansen] combines a brisk history of America’s anguished intervention in the region; artful reporting on how citizens in Turkey and its neighbors view the United States today; and unsparing self-reflection to explain how she, an Ivy League-educated journalist, could be so ignorant of the extent of her country’s role in remaking the post-World War II world . Notes on a Foreign Country is a testament to one journalist’s courage in digging deep within herself to understand the real story and to make sure she gets it right." ―Barbara Spindel, The Christian Science Monitor "[Hansen] asks probing and difficult questions that left me ruminating about their significance in our current political climate . Hansen’s book serves as a call to serious reflection and action for white Americans, even, and perhaps especially, the liberal, well traveled, and well intentioned." [Hansen] vividly captures the disorientation we experience when our preconceived notions collide with uncomfortable discoveries . Hansen's principal injunction to Americans to understand how others view them and their country's policies is timely and urgent." And her fascinating insider’s view of Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s rise upends Western simplicities . This is a beautiful, angry, sad piece of writing that every American should read as we try to live in a world that has long known things about us that we are only now coming to understand." By framing the history of American imperialism within her own journey from innocence to knowledge, Hansen serves as a guide to whom we all can easily relate." "Hansen’s sustained self-criticism indicts the white American system itself and, in the process, does the field of journalism a great service with her humility, introspection, and willingness to defy the establishment line." Written with compassion and a deep thirst for justice, this book is a must for anyone struggling to make sense of the rapidly changing times we live in." Hansen artfully conveys her own initial lack of awareness of the world, and her realization that she had internalized American exceptionalism into her own identity." Hansen builds her winning argument by combining personal examination and observation with geopolitical history lessons. “Lucid, reflective, probing, and poetic, Hansen’s book is also a searing critique of the ugly depths of American ignorance, made more dangerous because the declining U.S. imperial system coincides with decay at home. The book is a revelatory indictment of American policy both domestic and foreign, made gripping by Hansen’s confident . distillation of complicated historical processes and her detailed, evocative descriptions of places, people, and experiences most American audiences can’t imagine.” ― Publishers Weekly (starred and boxed review). Notes on a Foreign Country embraces this fate with a unique blend of passionate honesty, coruscating insight, and tenderness. A book of extraordinary power, it achieves something very rare: it opens up new ways of thinking and feeling.” ―Pankaj Mishra, author of Age of Anger “Suzy Hansen’s Notes on a Foreign Country is an essential, compelling read of an American woman’s coming of age and her experience abroad. Hansen describes how her own narrative of the United States’ role in geopolitics began to unravel only once she stepped out of her insular life in New York and into the unfamiliar world of Istanbul. With colorful anecdotes, observations, and telling interviews, Hansen seamlessly weaves together the complex fabric of Turkish society, and with that presents a fresh look at the United States and the perceptions abroad of its foreign policy and of its people.” ―Lynsey Addario, photographer and theauthor of It’s What I Do “It is rare to come across an American writer who has moved through the world―especially the Islamic world―with the acute self-awareness and thoughtfulness of Suzy Hansen. She has deftly blended memoir, reportage, and history to produce a book of great beauty and intellectual rigor. I’m in awe of this wise, coruscating book.” ―Michelle Goldberg, author of The Goddess Pose “It’s really quite simple: if you have any interest at all in how the non-Western world views America and Americans, you must read Suzy Hansen’s beautifully composed memoir Notes on a Foreign Country . And when America’s leaders complain―while campaigning and in office―that there is “great hatred” for the U.S. (and that they want to get to the bottom of it), it should be required reading by government officials―all the way to the Oval Office.” ―Hooman Majd, author of The Ayatollah Begs to Differ.

His portrait of his city is thus also a self-portrait, refracted by memory and the melancholy–or h ü z ü n– that all Istanbullus share: the sadness that comes of living amid the ruins of a lost empire.With cinematic fluidity, Pamuk moves from his glamorous, unhappy parents to the gorgeous, decrepit mansions overlooking the Bosphorus; from the dawning of his self-consciousness to the writers and painters–both Turkish and foreign–who would shape his consciousness of his city. Turkish novelist Pamuk ( Snow ) presents a breathtaking portrait of a city, an elegy for a dead civilization and a meditation on life's complicated intimacies. Throughout, Pamuk details the breakdown of his family: elders die, his parents fight and grow apart, and he must find his way in the world. Reminiscent of works by Jorge Luis Borges and Gabriel García Márquez, Pamuk’s novels, mostly set in his native Turkey, have racked up an International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, New York Times Notable Books of the Year, and profiles on NPR (see Snow , ***1/2 Nov/Dec 2004).

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW AND THE ECONOMIST Winner of the Natan Book Award, the National Jewish Book Award, and the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award An authoritative and deeply personal narrative history of the State of Israel, by one of the most influential journalists writing about the Middle East today Not since Thomas L. Friedman’s groundbreaking From Beirut to Jerusalem has a book captured the essence and the beating heart of the Middle East as keenly and dynamically as My Promised Land . We meet Shavit’s great-grandfather, a British Zionist who in 1897 visited the Holy Land on a Thomas Cook tour and understood that it was the way of the future for his people; the idealist young farmer who bought land from his Arab neighbor in the 1920s to grow the Jaffa oranges that would create Palestine’s booming economy; the visionary youth group leader who, in the 1940s, transformed Masada from the neglected ruins of an extremist sect into a powerful symbol for Zionism; the Palestinian who as a young man in 1948 was driven with his family from his home during the expulsion from Lydda; the immigrant orphans of Europe’s Holocaust, who took on menial work and focused on raising their children to become the leaders of the new state; the pragmatic engineer who was instrumental in developing Israel’s nuclear program in the 1960s, in the only interview he ever gave; the zealous religious Zionists who started the settler movement in the 1970s; the dot-com entrepreneurs and young men and women behind Tel-Aviv’s booming club scene; and today’s architects of Israel’s foreign policy with Iran, whose nuclear threat looms ominously over the tiny country. the least tendentious book about Israel I have ever read.” —Leon Wieseltier, The New York Times Book Review “Spellbinding . --This text refers to the Audio CD edition. This is the least tendentious book about Israel I have ever read. Shavit’s book is an extended test of his own capacity to maintain his principles in full view of the brutality that surrounds them.” —Leon Wieseltier, The New York Times Book Review “Spellbinding . In this divided, fought-over shard of land splintered from the Middle East barely seventy years ago, Mr. Shavit’s prophetic voice carries lessons that all sides need to hear.” — The Economist “One of the most nuanced and challenging books written on Israel in years . [The] book’s real power: On an issue so prone to polemic, Mr. Shavit offers candor.” —The Wall Street Journal “A tour de force.” —Jewish Journal “Reads like a love story and a thriller at once.” —Dwight Garner, The New York Times. “[A] searingly honest, descriptively lush, painful and riveting story of the creation of Zionism in Israel and [Shavit’s] own personal voyage.” —The Washington Post “Shavit is a master storyteller. Required reading for both the left and the right.” — The Jewish Week “The most extraordinary book that I’ve read on [Israel] since Amos Elon’s book called The Israelis, and that was published in the late sixties.” —David Remnick, on Charlie Rose “ My Promised Land is an Israeli book like no other. Not since Amos Elon’s The Israelis, Amos Oz’s In the Land of Israel, and Thomas Friedman’s From Beirut to Jerusalem has there been such a powerful and comprehensive book written about the Jewish State and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Ari Shavit is one of Israel’s leading columnists and writers, and the story he tells describes with great empathy the Palestinian tragedy and the century-long struggle between Jews and Arabs over the Holy Land. My Promised Land is the ultimate personal odyssey of a humanist exploring the startling biography of his tormented homeland, which is at the very center of global interest.” —Ehud Barak, former Prime Minister and Defense Minister of Israel “With deeply engaging personal narratives and morally nuanced portraits, Ari Shavit takes us way beneath the headlines to the very heart of Israel’s dilemmas in his brilliant new work. Ari Shavit has made a storied career of explaining Israel to Israelis; now he shares his mind-blowing, trustworthy insights with the rest of us. My Promised Land is a remarkable achievement.” —Jeffrey Goldberg, national correspondent, The Atlantic “Ari Shavit’s My Promised Land is without question one of the most important books about Israel and Zionism that I have ever read. Both movingly inspiring and at times heartbreakingly painful, My Promised Land tells the story of the Jewish state as it has never been told before, capturing both the triumph and the torment of Israel’s experience and soul. This is the book that has the capacity to reinvent and reshape the long-overdue conversation about how Israel’s complex past ought to shape its still-uncertain future.” —Daniel Gordis, author of Saving Israel and Koret Distinguished Fellow at Shalem College, Jerusalem.

Lucette Lagnado's father, Leon, is a successful Egyptian businessman and boulevardier who, dressed in his signature white sharkskin suit, makes deals and trades at Shepherd's Hotel and at the dark bar of the Nile Hilton. Deprived of wealth, status, and any means of coping, Lagnado’s father fades, but he never loses his air of chivalry, manifested in a regular outflow of tiny checks to charitable causes—orphanages, vocational schools, and dowry funds for poor girls—overseas. Dashing man-about-town Leon Lagnado, who kept to his carousing ways even after marrying a beautiful women 22 years his junior, was enraptured at the age of 55 by the author, his fourth child; affectionately called Loulou, she became her father's companion, even at temple services and the Nile Hilton bar.