Farewell to Salonica: City at the Crossroads


Leon Sciaky - 2003
    This Paul Dry Books rediscovered classic includes many photos courtesy of Leon Sciaky's son Peter, who has also written a short biographical sketch of his father's life in America."Farewell to Salonica is a fresh and charming book that throws a kindly light on a sector of human life unknown to most Americans."—New York Times"A gallery of beautiful and quaint sketches, revealing fascinating aspects of civilization in a strange city where East met West and the ancient past met the future…It creates an atmosphere of expectation and wonder and enjoyment. Most of all, an atmosphere of living."—Christian Science Monitor"An altogether charming book, so simply and truthfully written…The Salonica one reads about is not only a fascinating and complex city in which many national and cultural strains run side by side, but it is a critical city of Aegean politics…The breakdown of the Turkish Empire and its consequences for Balkan affairs are better understood when one has read this book. But it is not the political value of the book that should be emphasized so much as its quiet charm, its unpretentious and easy portrayal of a cultural pattern through an account of an engaging family…A warm and softly luminous book."—The Nation"This is a story of one man's intensely happy boyhood, set against the politically seething years at the turn of the century in the ever-coveted prize city of the Balkans, Salonica…written in a charming and effortless manner."—Philadelphia Inquirer"For the gift of a happy youth, Mr. Sciaky has repaid his city handsomely…it recalls Rebecca West's Black Lamb and Grey Falcon…It is an intensely personal story, yet so completely was [the young Sciaky] of his time and place that it is also the story of Salonica in the final phase of its existence; for the city that Sciaky knew, largely dominated by its 70,000 Spanish Jews, has gone…The author has made Salonica a living town, peopled by men and women of flesh and blood, people with all the human faults and weaknesses, but also with the lovable qualities that may be found in humanity everywhere by the man with skill to pick them out"—New York Herald Tribune"A charming portrait of an era."—Honolulu Advertiser"This picture of a Jewish childhood among rich merchants in Salonica has a glow, the radiant sunshine of a protected childhood."—Chicago SunLeon Sciaky was born in 1894, when the Turkish flag still waved over Salonica. His family left their beloved but turbulent homeland in 1915, settling in New York City. Sciaky lived in America—mainly upstate New York—with his wife, Frances, and son until his death in 1958. He taught at a number of progressive schools and camps and, in his last years, owned and operated a school and camp with Frances.

The Ottomans: Dissolving Images


Andrew Wheatcroft - 1994
    This book aims to unravel the mystery in two ways. Firstly, it looks at the Ottomans and their world in terms relevant to an eastern Islamic society, with its own principles and practices that seemed merely barbaric to the West. The book also comes to terms with the West's expectations of the Ottomans. The author's aim is both to tell the story and offer some explanation. The book interprets the Ottomans, to make sense of a society that to Western eyes seemed feckless and utterly corrupt, cruel and craven by turns. It was frequently all of these things but not without reason or cause.

The Immortal Ataturk: A Psychobiography


Vamık D. Volkan - 1985
    

The Emergence of Modern Turkey


Bernard Lewis - 1969
    It covers the emergence of Turkey over two centuries, from the decline and collapse of the Ottoman Empire up to the present day. In a new chapter, Lewis discusses the origins of his book in the Cold War era and the events that have taken place since its first publication in 1961. This new edition addresses Turkey's emergence as a decidedly Western-oriented power despite internal opposition from neutralists and Islamic fundamentalists. It examines such issues as Turkey's inclusion in NATO and application to the European Union, and its involvement with the politics of the Middle East. Authoritative and insightful, The Emergence of Modern Turkey remains the classic text on the history of modern Turkey.

The Making of Modern Turkey


Feroz Ahmad - 1991
    In this major textbook, Feroz Ahmad provides a thorough examination of the political, social and economic processes which led to the formation of a new Turkey.After a chapter on the Ottoman Legacy, the book covers the period since the revolution of 1908 and the development of the new Turkey. Successive chapters chart the progress through the single-party regime set up by Ataturk (1923-1945), the multi-party period (1945-1960) and the three military interventions of 1960, 1971 and 1980. The book ends in 1989 with the election of Turgat Ozal as president. In contrast to most current analyses of modern Turkey, the author emphasises the socio-economic changes rather than continuities as the motor of politics.

Dr. Bob and the Good Old Timers


Ed Nyland - 2015
    Its essence is sharing. Therefore, Bill W. and Dr. Bob are always referred to within the Fellowship as the co-founders. So far, among the majority of A.A. members, the Ohio surgeon has been less well known than his partner. He died in 1950, when A.A. was only 15 years old. But his influence on the whole A.A. program is permanent and profound. This book gives a portrait of Dr. Bob as full-sale and balanced as possible—for the most part, in the words of those who knew him personally. The young man who grew up in Vermont became a hard-drinking college boy, then a medical student fighting the onset of his own alcoholism, a respected physician, a loving but increasingly unreliable family man, and at last a desperately ill drunk. He was without hope until he met a stockbroker from New York—Bill W., who urgently needed a fellow alcoholic to help him maintain his own sobriety. His story then becomes inextricably entwined with that of Alcoholics Anonymous: from a fledgling Fellowship to a powerful spiritual movement with a worldwide reach. Dr. Bob’s story remains instructional and inspiring to those who read it today.

Atatürk: The Biography of the Founder of Modern Turkey


Andrew Mango - 1999
    He divided the Allies, defeated the last Sultan, and secured the territory of the Turkish national state, becoming the first president of the new republic in 1923, fast creating his own legend.Andrew Mango's revealing portrait of Atatürk throws light on matters of great importance today-resurgent nationalism, religious fundamentalism, and the reality of democracy.

A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility


Taner Akçam - 2006
    Although Armenians and world opinion have held the Ottoman powers responsible, Turkey has consistently rejected any claim of intentional genocide. Now, in a pioneering work of excavation, Turkish historian Taner Akçam has made extensive and unprecedented use of Ottoman and other sources to produce a scrupulous charge sheet against the Turkish authorities. The first scholar of any nationality to have mined the significant evidence--in Turkish military and court records, parliamentary minutes, letters, and eyewitness accounts--Akçam follows the chain of events leading up to the killing and then reconstructs its systematic orchestration by coordinated departments of the Ottoman state, the ruling political parties, and the military. He also probes the crucial question of how Turkey succeeded in evading responsibility, pointing to competing international interests in the region, the priorities of Turkish nationalists, and the international community's inadequate attempts to bring the perpetrators to justice. As Turkey lobbies to enter the European Union, Akçam's work becomes ever more important and relevant. Beyond its timeliness, A Shameful Act is sure to take its lasting place as a classic and necessary work on the subject.

The Tears of Yesteryear


Julie Tulba - 2019
    Thousands settled in Homestead, Pennsylvania, a city where the skies were always black, the steel mills were always roaring, and life was bleak and harsh. One of them, Ewa Piekos, an orphan girl of 15 from Poland, wants simply to be loved and to feel like she is not alone. On the voyage to America, Ewa’s beloved sister dies, throwing her into an emotional tailspin. It’s only after arriving at Ellis Island that Ewa learns the real reason she was brought to the Land of Golden Opportunity. This secret is almost as crushing to her as the moment her sister died. From the time she arrives at Ellis Island, Ewa's life is never an easy one. It is filled with heartache and loss. But her life in America enables her to plant roots which eventually grow with the family she establishes there.

The Last Gangster: My Final Confession


Charlie Richardson - 2013
    Boss of the Richardson Gang and rival of the Krays, to cross him would result in brutal repercussions. Famously arrested on the day England won the World Cup in 1966, his trial heard he allegedly used iron bars, bolt cutters and electric shocks on his enemies.The Last Gangster is Richardson’s frank account of his largely untold life story, finished just before his death in September 2012. He shares the truth behind the rumours and tells of his feuds with the Krays for supremacy, undercover missions involving politicians, many lost years banged up in prison and reveals shocking secrets about royalty, phone hacking, bent coppers and the infamous black box.Straight up, shocking and downright gripping, this is the ultimate exposé on this legendary gangster and his extraordinary life.

A Dangerous Place: The Story of the Railway Murders


Simon Farquhar - 2016
    In September 1970, two boys met in the playground on their first day at secondary school in North London. They formed what would be described at the Old Bailey thirty years later as ‘a unique and wicked bond’. Between 1982 and 1986, striking near lonely railway stations in London and the Home Counties, their partnership took them from rape to murder. Three police forces pooled their resources to catch them in the biggest criminal manhunt since the Yorkshire Ripper Enquiry.A Dangerous Place is the first full-length account of the crimes of John Duffy and David Mulcahy. Told by the son of one of the police officers who led the enquiry, exhaustively researched and with unprecedented access, this is the story of two of the most notorious serial killers of the twentieth century and the times they operated in. It is the story of the women who died at their hands. It is the story of the women who survived them, and who had the courage to ensure justice was done. And it is the story of a father, told by a son.

Lords of the Horizons: A History of the Ottoman Empire


Jason Goodwin - 1998
    Islamic, martial, civilized, and tolerant, it advanced in three centuries from the dusty foothills of Anatolia to rule on the Danube and the Nile; at its height, Indian rajahs and the kings of France beseeched the empire's aid. In its last three hundred years the empire seemed ready to collapse, a prodigy of survival and decay. In this striking evocation of the empire's power, Jason Goodwin explores how the Ottomans rose and how, against all odds, they lingered on. In doing so, he also offers a long look back to the origins of problems that plague present-day Kosovars and Serbs.

The Balkans: A Short History


Mark Mazower - 2000
    In this highly acclaimed short history, Mark Mazower sheds light on what has been called the tinderbox of Europe, whose troubles have ignited wider wars for hundreds of years. Focusing on events from the emergence of the nation-state onward, The Balkans reveals with piercing clarity the historical roots of current conflicts and gives a landmark reassessment of the region’s history, from the world wars and the Cold War to the collapse of communism, the disintegration of Yugoslavia, and the continuing search for stability in southeastern Europe.

The Balkans in World History


Andrew Baruch Wachtel - 2008
    The Balkans in World Historyre-defines this space in positive terms, taking as a starting point the cultural, historical, and social threads that allow us to see this region as a coherent if complex whole. Eminent historian Andrew Wachtel here depicts the Balkans as that borderland geographical space in which four of theworld's greatest civilizations have overlapped in a sustained and meaningful way to produce a complex, dynamic, sometimes combustible, multi-layered local civilization. It is the space in which the cultures of ancient Greece and Rome, of Byzantium, of Ottoman Turkey, and of Roman Catholic Europemet, clashed and sometimes combined. The history of the Balkans is thus a history of creative borrowing by local people of the various civilizations that have nominally conquered the region. Encompassing Bulgaria, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, Albania, Macedonia, Greece, andEuropean Turkey, the Balkans have absorbed many voices and traditions, resulting in one of the most complex and interesting regions on earth.

Turkey: A Short History


Norman Stone - 2011
    Stone deftly conducts the reader through this story, from the arrival of the Seljuks in Anatolia in the eleventh century to the modern republic applying for EU membership in the twenty-first. It is an historical account of epic proportions, featuring rapacious leaders such as Genghis Khan and Tamerlane through the glories of Sultan Süleyman the Magnificent to Kemal Atatürk, the reforming genius and founder of modern Turkey. At its height, the Ottoman Empire was a superpower that brought Islam to the gates of Vienna. Stone examines the reasons for the empires long decline and shows how it gave birth to the modern Turkish republic, where east and west, religion and secularism, tradition and modernity still form vibrant elements of national identity. Norman Stone brilliantly draws out the larger themes of Turkeys history, resulting in a book that is a masterly exposition of the historians craft.