The Fall of the Ottomans

Sunday Times Top Ten Best-seller. The final destruction of the Ottoman Empire - one of the great epics of the First World War, from best-selling historian Eugene Rogan. For some four centuries the Ottoman Empire had been one of the most powerful states in Europe as well as ruler of the Middle East. By 1914 it had been drastically weakened and circled by numerous predators waiting to finish it off. Following the Ottoman decision to join the First World War on the side of the Central Powers the British, French and Russians hatched a plan to finish the Ottomans off: an ambitious and unprecedented invasion of Gallipoli...Eugene Rogan's remarkable book recreates one of the most important but poorly understood fronts of the First World War. Despite fighting back with great skill and ferocity against the Allied onslaught and humiliating the British both at Gallipoli and in Mesopotamia (Iraq), the Ottomans were ultimately defeated, clearing the way for the making, for better or worse, of a new Middle East which has endured to the present. Thrilling, superb, and colourful, Eugene Rogan's Fall of the Ottomans is brilliant storytelling. Filled with flamboyant characters, impeccable scholarship that illuminates the neglected Near Eastern theater of WWI - showing how the Ottomans managed to perform unexpectedly well against the allies - and revelatory analysis that explains the modern Mideast, The Fall of the Ottomans is truly essential but also truly exciting reading -- Simon Sebag Montefiore A vivid account of the fighting that led to the fall of one of the world's great empires -- Roger Owen, Professor Emeritus of Middle East History, Harvard University Eugene Rogan has written a meticulously researched, panoramic, and engrossing history of the final years of the Ottoman Empire. This 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. An altogether splendid work of historical writing -- Ali Allawi (author of The Occupation of Iraq) An excellent historian who does a fine job. Impressively sound and fair-minded -- Max Hastings Sunday Times A timely and capacious history... compelling and brilliant -- Jeremy Seal Sunday Telegraph Remarkably readable, judicious and well-researched -- Mark Mazower Financial Times