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“Trouble in the Balkans” was a familiar headline in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, as the European nations living under the rule of the Ottoman Empire simmered with nationalism, unrest, and a covetous yearning for one another’s territory. The Ottoman Empire had seen centuries of dominance, but by the start of the twentieth century, the once-powerful Turks were declining. As reformers within the empire sought routes to power, Ottoman subjects—denied access to the avenues of influence—sensed that the time was ripe for rebelling.

The fall of Constantinople in 1453 marked a number of significant historical turning points. It saw the end of the last vestige of the Roman Empire, which had been founded more than 1,400 years before, and marked the beginning of a period of dominance for the growing Ottoman Empire. Furthermore, this moment marked the end of the Middle Ages in Europe and the beginning of the Renaissance, as the fall of Constantinople was directly linked to both these events.

Today, most Westerners still see the war in Afghanistan as a contest between democracy and Islamist fanaticism. That war is real, but it sits atop an older struggle between Kabul and the countryside, between order and chaos, between a modernist impulse to join the world and the pull of an older Afghanistan - a tribal universe of village republics permeated by Islam. Now, Tamim Ansary draws on his Afghan background, Muslim roots, and Western and Afghan sources to explain history from the inside out and to illuminate the long, internal struggle that the outside world has never fully understood.

The Ottoman Empire: The Untold Story to its Rise and Fall Plus the Revolutionary War: The Making of America (2 Books in 1) brings that history and the life-changing accounts to life. This two-book bundle takes a deep dive into the everyday lives of colonists, explores the upheaval and rebellions that shaped the lives of those who were there and for generations to come, the stronghold the Ottoman Empire had on the world, the origins of its storied population and how they came to power, the contributions they made, and more.

Lawrence of Arabia is one of the most iconic figures of the First World War, seen by many as a heroic and romantic guerrilla leader in a period of savage and deeply impersonal industrial warfare. While Lawrence himself has been the subject of many biographies and an award-winning film, the context of his war in the desert, and his ideas on war itself, are less well-known. Lawrence of Arabia on War is a study of those ideas and of his campaign of irregular warfare which has informed tactical theory and decision-making down to the present day.

In 1921 a small group of self-appointed patriots set out to avenge the deaths of almost one million victims of the Armenian Genocide. They named their operation Nemesis after the Greek goddess of retribution. Over several years the men tracked down and assassinated former Turkish leaders. The story of this secret operation has never been fully told until now.

From the taking of the holy city of Jerusalem in the 7th century AD by Caliph Umar, to the collapse of the Ottoman Empire following the end of World War I, Christian popes, emperors and kings, and Muslim caliphs and sultans were locked in a 1300-year battle for political, military, ideological, economic and religious supremacy. The House of War offers a wide, sweeping narrative, encompassing the broad historical and religious context of this period, while focussing on some of the key, pivotal sieges and battles, and on the protagonists, political and military.

Venice, 1522. Intelligence arrives from the east confirming Europe's greatest fear: the vastly rich Ottoman Sultan has all he needs to wage total war - and his sights are set on Rome. With Christendom divided, Suleyman the Magnificent has his hand on its entrails. From the palaces of Istanbul to the blood-soaked fields of Central Europe and the scorched coasts of North Africa, The Lion House pioneers a bold new style of eye-witness history to tell a true story of power at its most glittering, personal and perilous.

The Ottoman world was nothing like an exotic fairy tale featuring tyrant sultans, mean pashas, and ill-fated harem women. The true stories of genuine sultans and princes are a bit more complicated and no less exciting. Incredible facts about this empire still surprise anyone who starts discovering those stories. You’ll find out that, for quite a while, this Islamic state was effectively ruled by women, and that’s just the beginning.

Everyone has heard of Erdogan: Turkey’s bullish, mercurial president is the original postmodern populist. Around the world, other strongmen are now following the path that he has blazed. For the first time, Erdogan Rising tells the inside story of how a democracy on the fringe of Europe has succumbed to dictatorship. Hannah Lucinda Smith, Turkey correspondent with The Times of London, has witnessed all that has befallen Turkey and the wider region since the onset of the Arab Spring.

Gallipoli: the mere name summons the story of this well-known campaign of the First World War. And the story of Gallipoli, where in August 1915 the Allied forces made their last valiant effort against the Turks, is one of infamous might-have-beens. If only the Allies had held out a little longer, pushed a little harder, had better luck, Gallipoli might have been the decisive triumph that knocked the Ottoman Empire out of the First World War.

The Hittites built a remarkable civilization that deserves a spot in history. Sadly, few historians have been ready to tackle the task of uncovering the true story of these astonishing people. Thus, it can be hard for people to find an easily understood and cohesive resource on this fascinating civilization. But that is about to change. In this new Captivating History audiobook, you will discover the truth about this fascinating ancient civilization.

Melvyn Bragg and guests explore the history of the Islamic world through its religion, thinkers, poetry, empire and rulers. Since 1998, In Our Time has been the go-to radio programme for knowledge seekers and inquiring minds. This special themed collection provides a focussed, wide-ranging introduction to 25 of the ideas and events that shaped the Islamic world, highlighting the numerous connections between Islamdom and the West throughout history.

Caught between two seas and two continents, Istanbul lies at the centre of the most pressing challenges of our time. With environmental decay, rapacious development and tightening authoritarianism straining its social fabric to breaking point, it represents the precipitous moment civilizations around the world are currently facing. In and around its crumbling Byzantine-era fortifications, Alexander Christie-Miller meets people who are experiencing the looming crisis and fighting back, sometimes triumphing despite the odds.

Whereas for much of human history slavery was somewhat arbitrary, in its later forms, it often had a discriminatory component, typically based on race, ethnicity, nationality, or religion. This distinction shows how the practitioners of slavery justified the practice in terms of ideology, and Slavic people were discriminated against within the Ottoman Empire. Slavs had lived in the lands of today’s Eastern European region for centuries.

As this all suggests, the story of the Young Turks and the last years of the Ottoman Sultanate is a complex and interesting one. It is the history of a state struggling to survive against seemingly impossible odds, featuring a long battle for the minds and souls of the inhabitants of a declining empire. An empire caught between nationalism and liberal imperialism.

This remarkable book recreates one of the watershed moments in the history of the Middle East: the ferocious outbreaks of disorder across the Levant in 1860 which resulted in the massacre of thousands of Christians in Damascus. Eugene Rogan brilliantly recreates the lost world of the Middle East under Ottoman rule. This is both an essential book for understanding the emergence of the modern Middle East from the destruction of the old Ottoman world, and a uniquely gripping story.

The town of Caldiran (Chaldiran) in Turkey is home to about 60,000 people. In the early 16th century, it was the site of different kinds of faultlines, serving as a battleground between the region’s two greatest powers as they clashed over politics and religion. On August 23, 1514 two sides clashed at Chaldiran in a contest for hegemony over the Middle East. The course of the conflict can be reconstructed from the politics of the time, knowledge of the characters involved, the contemporary records are available, and what followed the battle.

Founded on Christmas Day 1119 in Jerusalem, the Knights Templar was a religious order dedicated to defending the Holy Land and its Christian pilgrims in the decades after the First Crusade. Legendary for their bravery and dedication, the Templars became one of the wealthiest and most powerful bodies of the medieval world—and the chief defenders of Christian society against growing Muslim forces.

The Secret History, written by the sixth-century Byzantine historian Procopius, is one of the most extraordinary and scandalous documents to have survived from the early Byzantine period. Procopius, the leading official historian of his time, lived during the testing and indulgent time of Emperor Justinian the Great and wrote the official records of the successful wars and the grand building projects of his ruler. These were words of aggrandisement. But covertly, Procopius kept a very different record....