Ryan Gingeras

This epic account of Ottoman decline and the birth of modern Turkey is a tour de force of accessible scholarship.

Gingeras takes an even-handed approach to each issue, while never making light of the horrendous tally of human suffering that emerges on every side. Turks have long been treated to an over-simplified account of their modern history. This book teaches the beginning of wisdom, which is that most human history, as it actually happened, was a terrible, bewildering mess.

In his impressive centenary history, Ryan Gingeras recounts not just the death throes of the old realm but the painful emergence of Turkey as a nation state ... It is a complicated story that still reverberates under Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and Gingeras narrates it with lucid authority.

Dispassionate and well-researched ... Gingeras sets out the twisting, turning story of decline through the later part of the 19th century.

Fruitful reflections on the enduring cultural legacy of the Ottomans, how their empire ended and what was lost when it did ... brings a welcome human lens to the story of the empire's disintegration.

The Ottoman Empire had been one of the major facts in European history since the Middle Ages. Stretching from the Adriatic to the Indian Ocean, the Empire was both a great political entity and a religious one, with the Sultan, as Caliph, the successor to Mohammed. 
 
Yet the Empire's fateful decision to support Germany and Austria-Hungary in 1914 doomed it to disaster, breaking it up into a series of European colonies and what emerged as an independent Saudi Arabia. 
 
Ryan Gingeras's superb new book explains how these epochal events came about and shows how much we still live in the shadow of decisions taken so long ago. Would all of the Empire fall to marauding Allied armies, or could something be saved? In such an ethnically and religiously entangled region, what would be the price paid to create a cohesive and independent new state? The story of the creation of modern Turkey is an extraordinary, bitter epic, brilliantly told here.

Ryan Gingeras

Praise for The Last Days of the Ottoman Empire

This epic account of Ottoman decline and the birth of modern Turkey is a tour de force of accessible scholarship.

Gingeras takes an even-handed approach to each issue, while never making light of the horrendous tally of human suffering that emerges on every side. Turks have long been treated to an over-simplified account ...

In his impressive centenary history, Ryan Gingeras recounts not just the death throes of the old realm but the painful emergence of Turkey as a nation state ... It is a complicated story that still reverberat ...

This epic account of Ottoman decline and the birth of modern Turkey is a tour de force of accessible scholarship.

Gingeras takes an even-handed approach to each issue, while never making light of the horrendous tally of human suffering that emerges on every side. Turks have long been treated to an over-simplified account ...

In his impressive centenary history, Ryan Gingeras recounts not just the death throes of the old realm but the painful emergence of Turkey as a nation state ... It is a complicated story that still reverberat ...

This epic account of Ottoman decline and the birth of modern Turkey is a tour de force of accessible scholarship.

Gingeras takes an even-handed approach to each issue, while never making light of the horrendous tally of human suffering that emerges on every side. Turks have long been treated to an over-simplified account ...

In his impressive centenary history, Ryan Gingeras recounts not just the death throes of the old realm but the painful emergence of Turkey as a nation state ... It is a complicated story that still reverberat ...

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter