Caroline Finkel has lived in Istanbul for many years and traveled widely in Turkey and the former Ottoman lands. She has a doctorate in Ottoman history from the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London. Osman's Dream is her third book. She currently divides her time between Istanbul and London.
"Osman's Dream is a deeply sympathetic, compelling and highly
readable account of the rise and fall of an immensely complex and
dynamic society which, at its height was the most the most
far-reaching and the most powerful Empire the world had ever seen.
But it is also something more. For Caroline Finkel has not only
told history of how a band of Turcoman warriors from eastern
Anatolia came to dominate so much of the world. She has also shown
why that history matters, why today we are in no position to
understand, not merely the modern Republic of Turkey but also
modern Islam unless we also understand the past, and the present
perception, of the greatest and most enduring of the Islamic
states."--Anthony Pagden, Distinguished Professor of History and
Political Science, UCLA
"[Finkel's] mastery of the historical literature is obvious: The
sheer amount of information packed between these two covers makes
it a landmark achievement."--New York Sun
"An absorbing, monumental story of one of the most reviled and
misunderstood of all empires.... Osman's Dream is a marvelous
achievement."--BBC History Magazine
"Caroline Finkel effortlessly conveys the high drama of Ottoman
history."--Orhan Pamuk
"Finkel has brilliantly woven together a highly readable survey of
600 years of Ottoman history. Well researched and beautifully
written, Osman's Dream will be essential reading for anyone who
wants to know more about the Empire that ruled for centuries over
so many of our contemporary trouble spots--from the Balkans to the
Arab world."--Heath W. Lowry, Princeton University
"Finkel has managed to produce a scholarly, lucid, judicious and
enjoyable account of over 600 years of history in a single volume,
which will surely be the standard work of its kind for many years
to come."--Times Literary Supplement
"Finkel is judicious, evenhanded and objective...is an impressive
and important work."--The Nation
"How timely to have such a lucid, well-researched, and fair-minded
history of the Ottoman Empire--and one too which treats it not as
some exotic and alien world, but as part of our common
past."--Margaret MacMillan, author of Paris 1919
"Magnificent.... For perhaps the first time in English, a genuine
Ottoman scholar has written a clear narrative account of the great
empire based mainly on Turkish rather than hostile western
accounts. The result is not only a revelation; it is a vital
corrective to the influential but partial and wrong-headed readings
of the flagbearers of intellectual Islamophobia."--William
Dalrymple, The Scotsman
"Osman's Dream is a treasure for anyone who wants to know exactly
what happened when in the Ottoman Empire. Here at last is a
reliable history that takes into full account not only the work of
international and Turkish historians but also the writings of the
Ottomans themselves."--Hugh Pope, author of Sons of the Conquerors:
The Rise of theTurkic World
"The timing of Caroline Finkel's splendidly written Osman's Dream
reflects the buoyant state of Ottoman scholarship. Neglected
archives have been triumphantly mined by a new generation of
scholars, and Finkel's intimacy with the material makes this the
most authoritative narrative history of the empire yet
published."--Literary Review
"With this superb book, Finkel boldly covers new ground in striving
to show the Ottoman Empire from within.... Having spent 15 years
living in Turkey, Finkel is uniquely positioned to overcome the
practical hurdles to Ottoman research, but her real strength is in
historiography: she has a keen ability to extract salient
observations from her sources even as she renders their political
motives transparent. The result is a panorama of the Ottoman Empire
to rival the best portraits of the Romanovs and Habsburgs, and a
must-have for history collections."--Booklist
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