The Fall of the Ottomans

"A remarkably readable, judicious and well-researched account of the Ottoman war in Anatolia and the Arab provinces."

"[An] intricately worked but very readable account of the Ottoman theocracy's demise.... This is an extraordinary tale and Rogan recounts it well."

"The book is not only exact and readable but also has the elements of a thriller and thus is all the more remarkable in view of its thoroughness in covering a linguistically and historically difficult subject."

"To have written a page-turner as well as an accurate and comprehensive history of the Ottoman struggle for survival is a remarkable achievement."

"This engrossing history unfolds in the Middle Eastern theatre of the First World War, capturing the complex array of battles, brutalities, and alliances that brought down the six-hundred-year-old Ottoman Empire.... Rogan argues that the empire's ultimate demise was the result not of losing the war but of a clumsily negotiated peace. His balanced narrative unearths many seeds of current conflicts."

"[Rogan's] account is geopolitical and military writing at its best - taut, anecdotal and extraordinarily researched. A tangled story, to be sure, one that both commands and rewards the reader's attention."

"The Fall of the Ottomans is a remarkably lucid and accessible work of history, involving a large cast of contradictory and complex characters.... Telling quotations from diplomats, field commanders, and ordinary soldiers of all the combatants lend the narrative a powerful sense of immediacy."

"[An] assured account.... The book stands alongside the best histories."

"Rogan has written an impressively sound and fair-minded account of the fall of the Ottoman Empire."

"A comprehensive, lucid and revealing history.... This book will surely become the definitive history of the war."

"[A] masterly history of the Ottoman empire in its final years.... Eugene Rogan has written a meticulously researched, panoramic and engrossing history. The book is essential reading for understanding the evolution of the modern Middle East and the root causes of nearly all the conflicts that now plague the area. The Fall of the Ottomans is an altogether splendid work of historical writing."

"A timely and capacious history which leaves the over-trodden Flanders mud and football truces in favour of the various campaigns--at best imperfectly understood, at worst woefully unfamiliar--which the Allies waged in the Middle East. It's in the former Ottoman lands, traumatised by war, sectarianism and repression, that the legacies of the Great War continue to be grievously felt.... Here's a book whose instructive geopolitical relevance should be immediately apparent.... [A] compelling and brilliant book."

"Admirable and thoroughly researched.... A comprehensive history of World War I in the Middle East."

"As the Middle East is collapsing all around us, if you wanted to know where it all began and when, read this great book by a great Oxford historian."

"Eugene Rogan has given us an absorbing history of the war's principal military and political battles in the Middle East through the eyes of those who fought them. Weaving together accounts of the horrors of life in the trenches with those on the home front, he exposes the deadly dynamic emerging between the two--from the disastrous Ottoman attempt to invade Russia to the horrors of the Armenian deportations, and from the British invasion to the Arab revolt and the empire's final defeat and partition."

"A fantastic, readable, and much needed study of the most chronically neglected of all of the Great War's participants: the Ottoman Empire. Informative and enlightening."

"This is a gripping, masterful account of World War One in the Middle East from the vantage point of the Ottoman Empire.... Combining magisterial scholarship with a keen sense of drama and lively narrative style, it tells a grim story but a fascinating one.... If you want to understand the underlying causes of conflict and violence in the Middle East in the last century, you will not find a better book."

"This book opens up a window on vital chapters in the shaping of the Middle East as well as the history of the Great War, bringing together vivid personal details with a broad historical panorama of human suffering and heroism, the incompetence and folly of the general staffs, and the scheming of the great powers."

"Thoroughly researched and elegantly written by one of the leading experts on the region, The Fall of the Ottomans reminds us that the 1914-18 conflict was truly a world war with huge and continuing consequences. No one is better equipped than Eugene Rogan to handle the course and impact of the war in the Middle East and he does a superb job, telling a complex and multifaceted story with great clarity, understanding, and compassion. This timely and important work restores the Middle East to its rightful place in the history of the Great War."

"Thrilling, superb, and colorful, Eugene Rogan's The Fall of the Ottomans is brilliant storytelling. Filled with flamboyant characters, impeccable scholarship that illuminates the neglected Near Eastern theater of WWI--showing how the Ottomans managed repeatedly to defeat the Allies--and revelatory analysis that explains the modern Mideast, The Fall of the Ottomans is truly essential but also truly exciting reading."

"Eugene Rogan has written a meticulously researched, panoramic, and engrossing history of the final years of the Ottoman Empire. This book is essential reading for understanding the evolution of the modern Middle East and the root causes of nearly all the conflicts that now plague the area. An altogether splendid work of historical writing."