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Title: To be used with great caution
Review: This, the second of a two-volume work, ought to have been a standard history of the Ottoman Empire; it falls far short of expectations, however, due to the very large number of simple factual errors it contains, as well as the authors' bias toward nationalist Turkish interpreations of the recent past. This imbalance consistently permeates the book, wherein the authors seem to see themselves as having to "defend" the Ottomans against their critics, and is most extreme in the treatment of the Armenian Genocide. (The vehemence seen in some of the reviews below evidences the strong and partisan passions that beset this issue; while the authors' language is more temperate than that of some of the reviewers, they are not much more objective.)This book, long awaited by Ottomanists, proved to be rather an embarrassment to the field when it appeared. Readers should be aware that it is both unreliable and very partisan.
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