The Fall of the Ottomans: The Great War in the Middle East

New
Illustrated
2016
$21.60

By 1914 the powers of Europe were sliding inexorably toward war, and they pulled the Middle East along with them into one of the most destructive conflicts in human history. In The Fall of the Ottomans, award-winning historian Eugene Rogan brings the First World War and its immediate aftermath in the Middle East to vivid life, uncovering the often ignored story of the region's crucial role in the conflict. Unlike the static killing fields of the Western Front, the war in the Middle East was fast-moving and unpredictable, with the Turks inflicting decisive defeats on the Entente in Gallipoli, Mesopotamia, and Gaza before the tide of battle turned in the Allies' favor. The postwar settlement led to the partition of Ottoman lands, laying the groundwork for the ongoing conflicts that continue to plague the modern Arab world. A sweeping narrative of battles and political intrigue from Gallipoli to Arabia, The Fall of the Ottomans is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the Great War and the making of the modern Middle East.

Synopsis

By 1914 the powers of Europe were sliding inexorably toward war, and they pulled the Middle East along with them into one of the most destructive conflicts in human history. In The Fall of the Ottomans, award-winning historian Eugene Rogan brings the First World War and its immediate aftermath in the Middle East to vivid life, uncovering the often ignored story of the region's crucial role in the conflict. Unlike the static killing fields of the Western Front, the war in the Middle East was fast-moving and unpredictable, with the Turks inflicting decisive defeats on the Entente in Gallipoli, Mesopotamia, and Gaza before the tide of battle turned in the Allies' favor. The postwar settlement led to the partition of Ottoman lands, laying the groundwork for the ongoing conflicts that continue to plague the modern Arab world. A sweeping narrative of battles and political intrigue from Gallipoli to Arabia, The Fall of the Ottomans is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the Great War and the making of the modern Middle East.

$21.60

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2 in stock

More Information

Format: Illustrated
Pages: 512
Edition: Illustrated
Publisher: Basic Books
Published: 04 Oct 2016
ISBN 10: 0465097421
ISBN 13: 9780465097425

Media Reviews

An Economist Best Book of the Year A Wall Street Journal Best Book for History Buffs Mark Mazower, Financial Times A remarkably readable, judicious, and well-researched account of the Ottoman war in Anatolia and the Arab provinces. New York Times Gripping... An extraordinary tale. Economist [An] assured account... The book stands alongside the best histories. Wall Street Journal The book is not only exact and readable but also has the elements of a thriller and thus is all the more remarkable in view of its thoroughness in covering a linguistically and historically difficult subject. New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice Rogan offers an intricately worked but very readable account of a theocracy's demise. New Yorker This engrossing history unfolds in the Middle Eastern theatre of the First World War, capturing the complex array of battles, brutalities, and alliances that brought down the six-hundred-year-old Ottoman Empire... Rogan argues that the empire's ultimate demise was the result not of losing the war but of a clumsily negotiated peace. His balanced narrative unearths many seeds of current conflicts. Daily Beast The Fall of the Ottomans is a remarkably lucid and accessible work of history... [Rogan] seems equally at home explaining the parameters of Ottoman grand strategy and the tensions of the British-Arab Alliance as he is at conjuring up the unique challenges of maneuver warfare in the Sinai and Palestine, or the brutal stalemate in the Gallipoli trenches. Telling quotations from diplomats, field commanders, and ordinary soldiers of all the combatants lend the narrative a powerful sense of immediacy. Sunday Telegraph (UK) [A] timely and capacious history which leaves the over-trodden Flanders mud and football truces in favor of the various campaigns--at best imperfectly understood, at worst woefully unfamiliar--which the Allies waged in the Middle East. It's in the former Ottoman lands, traumatised by war, sectarianism and repression, that the legacies of the Great War continue to be grievously felt... Here's a book whose instructive geopolitical relevance should be immediately apparent... [A] compelling and brilliant book. Washington Independent Review of Books [A] fresh and meticulous portrait of the Ottoman Empire: modern and modernizing, then declining, and eventually kaput. Spectator (UK) [A] masterly history of the Ottoman empire in its final years... Eugene Rogan has written a meticulously researched, panoramic and engrossing history. The book is essential reading for understanding the evolution of the modern Middle East and the root causes of nearly all the conflicts that now plague the area. The Fall of the Ottomans is an altogether splendid work of historical writing. New York Review of Books Admirable and thoroughly researched... A comprehensive history of World War I in the Middle East. The Times (UK) [A] comprehensive, lucid and revealing history... This book will surely become the definitive history of the war. Guardian (UK) Compared to the western front, the Middle East was a sideshow for all but those who called it home. Rogan has rightly put these Turks, Armenians and Arabs at the centre of his account.

Author Bio

Eugene Rogan is a professor of modern Middle Eastern history at the University of Oxford and director of the Middle East Centre, St Antony's College, Oxford.