Istanbul

This is a FABULOUS book about Istanbul covering the entire history of the city in a sparkling and dazzling narrative. Historian Thomas F. Madden has done an incredible job compiling the history of the city into a mere 358 pages. It is beautifully written and hard to put down. He spent more than twenty years working on the book and his patience and efforts show. He has truly written a noteworthy book from the heart, and it is obvious that he has lived and breathed the city.

Madden divides the book into four parts: Byzantion (667 BC-AD330), Byzantine Constantinople (330-1453), Ottoman Constantinople (1453-1923) and finally Istanbul (1923-2016). He provides maps of the city that are helpful and does an excellent job surveying each period the Ottoman period too! (Thank you Mr. Madden and your publisher Penguin Random House for doing the Ottomans justice by giving an accurate portrayal of their history a rare find these days sadly!) The city has a rich Christian Greco-Roman history that is well documented here too. He also gives a wonderful introduction into Modern Turkey, beginning with Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the incredible hero who galvanized the nation and formed a constitutional republic after the First World War the first in the Muslim world.

I LOVED this book and wholeheartedly recommend it to anybody who loves the city or wants to learn more about it and its history. I dont think anyone can truly understand world history without knowing the history of Istanbul.

Istanbul located at the junction of two great worlds, the ornament of the Turkish nation, the treasure of Turkish history, the dearest object of the Turkish nation, has a place in the heart of every Turk.
Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, Founder of Turkey

This wonderful book makes reading history fun. This delicious travelogue of a 358-page book is an easy-to-read jewel that is as insightful, pedagogical, and pleasurable as it is suspenseful. This book is a feast for the reader’s mind and imagination.

Professor Thomas F. Madden’s packing of thousands of years of history, from the Byzantion’s of 667 BC to AD 330 to today’s Istanbul, into this book exhibits his masterful telling of infinitely complex and profoundly rich history. The exquisitely told details of Byzantion, Byzantine Constantinople, Ottoman Constantinople, and today’s Istanbul, make history come alive, rendering this precious book a page-turner. It’s a feat of extraordinary writing by Professor Madden that enabled me to understand modern Turkey, in general, and Istanbul, in particular, a little better.

I fell in love with Hagia Sophia from the first time I saw television images of it years ago. This book helped me appreciate it and love it even more. Regardless of whether it reverts back to a grand mosque (perhaps remotely likely) or a magnificent basilica (impossibly unlikely), or remain a marvelous museum (most assuredly), I shall visit it in my lifetime, as I have already done with other places on my bucket list, including St. Peter’s Basilica and La Sagrada Familia.

Hagia Sophia, as perhaps the quintessential symbol of Byzantine Constantinople, Ottoman Constantinople and today’s Istanbul, provides insights into today’s geopolitical dynamism in the “Middle East”. Professor Madden writes: “Members of the AK [Justice and Development] Party have repeatedly discussed turning Hagia Sophia back into a mosque. Indeed, demonstrations calling for the restorations erupted outside the ancient structure in 2014 and 2015, and are likely to continue.”

Turkey, a long-time member of the U.N. and a seasoned member of NATO and seeking to become an EU member, has a modern, sophisticated and disciplined military and whose readiness likely surpasses that of Germany’s — if recent reports of Germany’s sorry state of readiness are true. In short, this book provides foundational understandings of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Turkey.

“The City”, as Professor Madden notes in the last page of this page, is “Too important to abandon, too strategic to avoid, too beautiful to resist, Istanbul long drew to it the peoples of the Mediterranean, muddled them together in the streets and markets, and produced a community that is ever changing. Its strength was never solely in its mighty walls or its well-trained militaries, but in the determination of its inhabitants to hold firm to it no matter that cost.”

I’d recommend this book to anyone who in interested in current world events.

This book is fabulous! Read it before you go, and you will get so much more out of your Istanbul visit.

The author tells the complicated history of Istanbul in a clear, concise, scholarly way, and never strayed from being captivating at the time.

There was only one thing I wish he had been been more clear on: the location of the end of the Via Egnatia and the old entrance into the city. We didn’t find it with his directions. It probably would have been better reference by its current name – Altnkap.

Read it. You’ll so thankful that you did. Istanbul history is like nothing else.

I have a great interest in Greek, Roman and Byzantine history, as well an interest in the history of cities. I have read many histories on Byzantium/Constantinople/Istanbul. This book carefully describes the changes to this city and its people over the centuries in a way that you can visualize the real life of the great city of Istanbul ( !, eis tin poli to the greeks). Each chapter capture the major changes to the city life and its environs. Great read!

This is an outstanding overview of the city of Istanbul from its founding to the present time. Since it covers span of time that is measured in centuries, there are gaps in the discussion of the succession of leaders. But it is an enjoyable book to read. I wish I had read it before going to Istanbul some years ago. I would have been far more attuned to the architecture of the city and would have been alert to structures I saw but did not appreciate. It complements books on the history of the crusades. Thomas Madden walks the reader through numerous Byzantine plots that bring real meaning to the term.

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