A "superlative [and] exhaustively researched" biography of "one of the most complex and controversial figures in twentieth-century world history" ( Library Journal).Mustafa Kemal Atatürk was virtually unknown until 1919, when he took the lead in thwarting the victorious Allies' plan to partition the Turkish core of the Ottoman Empire. He divided the Allies, defeated the last Sultan, and secured the territory of the Turkish national state, becoming the first...

This biography of Ataturk aims to strip away the myth to show the complexities of the man beneath. Born plain Mustafa in Ottoman Salonica in 1881, he trained as an army officer but was virtually unknown until 1919, when he took the lead in thwarting the victorious Allies' plan to partition the Turkish core of the Ottoman Empire.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...

Eighty years have passed since Mustafa Kemal Ataturk founded the Turkish Republic out of the ruins of the Ottoman Empire and set it on the path of modernisation. He was determined that his country should be accepted as a member of the family of civilised nations.Today Turkey is a rapidly developing country, an emergent market and a medium-sized regional power with the second strongest army in NATO. It is an open country which attracts millions of tourists, thousands of foreign busi...

Since the 1970s, Turkey has suffered 35,000 deaths through terrorism, yet the PKK terror group was only recognized as such by the European Union in 2002.The realization that terrorism poses a world-wide threat is now forcing a keen reassessment of the struggle which Turkey has had to wage with terror for over thirty years while the world looked on. Terror is clearly now a key part of the international agenda and this authoritative account details and establishes the Turkish experie...

World War I sounded the death knell of empires. The forces of disintegration affected several empires simultaneously. To that extent they were impersonal. But prudent statesmen could delay the death of empires, rulers such as Emperor Franz Josef II of Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Sultan Abdülhamid II. Adventurous rulers - Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany and Enver Pasha in the Ottoman Empire - hastened it. Enver's decision to enter the war on the side of Germany destroyed the Ottoman state. It...

A century ago, as World War I got underway, the Middle East was dominated, as it had been for centuries, by the Ottoman Empire. But by 1923, its political shape had changed beyond recognition, as the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the insistent claims of Arab and Turkish nationalism and Zionism led to a redrawing of borders and shuffling of alliances—a transformation whose consequences are still felt today.This fully revised and updated second edition of The Makers of the M...

The definitive biography of the father of modern Turkey, a powerful figure in the still-unfolding drama of the Middle East.With the collapse of the Ottoman Empire after the First World War came the emergence of new nations, chief among them Turkey itself. It was the creation of one man, the soldier-statesman Mustafa Kemal, who dragged his country from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century, and in defeating Western imperialists inspired 'the cause of the East'. L...

Mustafa Kemal was one of the 20th century's greatest combat commanders.Born in Salonika to a middle-class family, this book follows the life of a great commander who served in the Italo–Turkish War of 1911–12 and the Balkan Wars of 1912–13 before taking command of the 19th Division based in Gallipoli during World War l. His sterling service led to his promotion to corps command during the fighting against the Russians in the Caucasus.Following the end of th...

Over the centuries the Middle East has confounded the dreams of conquerors and peacemakers alike. This now-classic book, fully updated to 2009, follows the historic struggles of the region over the last two hundred years, from Napoleon's assault on Egypt, through the slow decline and fall of the Ottoman Empire, to the painful emergence of modern nations, the Palestinian question and Islamic resurgence.For this third edition, Economist journalist and Middle East correspondent Nicola...

Published with a new afterword from the author—the classic, bestselling account of how the modern Middle East was createdThe Middle East has long been a region of rival religions, ideologies, nationalisms, and ambitions. All of these conflicts—including the hostilities between Arabs and Israelis, and the violent challenges posed by Iraq's competing sects—are rooted in the region's political inheritance: the arrangements, unities, and divisions imposed by the Allies...

SHORTLISTED FOR THE SAMUEL JOHNSON PRIZE 2013'As taut and richly embroidered as a great novel . . . a masterpiece' Sunday Telegraph'Dazzling' Sunday Times | 'Magnificent' Guardian | 'Sparkling' Daily TelegraphA towering history of the first Afghan War by bestselling historian William Dalrymple.In the spring of 1839, Britain invaded Afghanistan for the first t...

From "the great storyteller of modern Russian historians" (Financial Times) and a Wolfson History Prize winner, comes the definitive account of the forgotten war that shaped the modern age.The Charge of the Light Brigade, Florence Nightingale—these are the enduring icons of the Crimean War. Less well-known is that this savage war (1853-1856) killed almost a million soldiers and countless civilians; that it enmeshed four great empires—the British, French, T...