Staggering changes deftly chronicled by a seasoned historian.
A dense but smoothly recounted history of Istanbul’s transformation from parochial imperial capital to multinational modern city.
A scholar of wide-ranging interests and nimble prose, King (International Affairs/Georgetown Univ.; Odessa: Genius and Death in a City of Dreams, 2011, etc.) finds in the history of the Pera Palace—first established in 1892 in what was then a fashionable neighborhood of embassies on Istanbul’s European side of the Bosphorus—an elegant entree into Turkey’s complicated coming-of-age. Around the turn of the century, the city was choked by migration from the countryside, scarred by recurrent earthquakes and fires, and finally crisscrossed by a railroad, an extension of the glamorous new line of the Orient Express. Adapting the Pullman model, Belgian engineer Georges Nagelmackers instituted the European version of the sleeping car for luxurious accommodation on the long trip between Paris and the gateway to Asia, Istanbul. The Pera would offer a continuation of that modern European comfort. The first decades of the 20th century brought cataclysmic change to Istanbul, with the breakup of the Ottoman Empire and occupation by multinational forces at the end of World War I. In this atmosphere, the hotel became the center of Allied administration and its nearby streets, “a shocking testament to Istanbul’s newfound libertinism.” This was not lost on Turkish officer Mustafa Kemal, who rallied the nationalists for a war of liberation, ending with the declaration of the Turkish Republic of 1924. Bought by a Muslim businessman in 1927, the Pera remained a beacon of cosmopolitan licentiousness between the world wars—within a city roiling with bars, alcohol, music and Western films—yet it eventually became part of a shift to a more Muslim, Turkish, homogeneous population that began producing its own popular culture. The emancipation of women, flirtation with leftist ideals, struggle to remain neutral in World War II and use as a transit point for the exodus of Jews posed unique challenges to this vibrant city.
Staggering changes deftly chronicled by a seasoned historian.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-393-08914-1
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: June 10, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2014
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.
A study of swimming as sport, survival method, basis for community, and route to physical and mental well-being.
For Bay Area writer Tsui (American Chinatown: A People's History of Five Neighborhoods, 2009), swimming is in her blood. As she recounts, her parents met in a Hong Kong swimming pool, and she often visited the beach as a child and competed on a swim team in high school. Midway through the engaging narrative, the author explains how she rejoined the team at age 40, just as her 6-year-old was signing up for the first time. Chronicling her interviews with scientists and swimmers alike, Tsui notes the many health benefits of swimming, some of which are mental. Swimmers often achieve the “flow” state and get their best ideas while in the water. Her travels took her from the California coast, where she dove for abalone and swam from Alcatraz back to San Francisco, to Tokyo, where she heard about the “samurai swimming” martial arts tradition. In Iceland, she met Guðlaugur Friðþórsson, a local celebrity who, in 1984, survived six hours in a winter sea after his fishing vessel capsized, earning him the nickname “the human seal.” Although humans are generally adapted to life on land, the author discovered that some have extra advantages in the water. The Bajau people of Indonesia, for instance, can do 10-minute free dives while hunting because their spleens are 50% larger than average. For most, though, it’s simply a matter of practice. Tsui discussed swimming with Dara Torres, who became the oldest Olympic swimmer at age 41, and swam with Kim Chambers, one of the few people to complete the daunting Oceans Seven marathon swim challenge. Drawing on personal experience, history, biology, and social science, the author conveys the appeal of “an unflinching giving-over to an element” and makes a convincing case for broader access to swimming education (372,000 people still drown annually).
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-61620-786-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
Thus the second most costly war in American history, whose “outcome seemed little short of a miracle.” A sterling account.
A master storyteller’s character-driven account of a storied year in the American Revolution.
Against world systems, economic determinist and other external-cause schools of historical thought, McCullough (John Adams, 2001, etc.) has an old-fashioned fondness for the great- (and not-so-great) man tradition, which may not have much explanatory power but almost always yields better-written books. McCullough opens with a courteous nod to the customary villain in the story of American independence, George III, who turns out to be a pleasant and artistically inclined fellow who relied on poor advice; his Westmoreland, for instance, was a British general named Grant who boasted that with 5,000 soldiers he “could march from one end of the American continent to the other.” Other British officers agitated for peace, even as George wondered why Americans would not understand that to be a British subject was to be free by definition. Against these men stood arrayed a rebel army that was, at the least, unimpressive; McCullough observes that New Englanders, for instance, considered washing clothes to be women’s work and so wore filthy clothes until they rotted, with the result that Burgoyne and company had a point in thinking the Continentals a bunch of ragamuffins. The Americans’ military fortunes were none too good for much of 1776, the year of the Declaration; at the slowly unfolding battle for control over New York, George Washington was moved to despair at the sight of sometimes drunk soldiers running from the enemy and of their officers “who, instead of attending to their duty, had stood gazing like bumpkins” at the spectacle. For a man such as Washington, to be a laughingstock was the supreme insult, but the British were driven by other motives than to irritate the general—not least of them reluctance to give up a rich, fertile and beautiful land that, McCullough notes, was providing the world’s highest standard of living in 1776.
Thus the second most costly war in American history, whose “outcome seemed little short of a miracle.” A sterling account.Pub Date: June 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-7432-2671-2
Page Count: 656
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2005
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