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Terrell's Suggested Reading List for Turkey
Guidebooks
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The Rough Guide to Turkey The Rough Guide's
2007 edition is, in my opinion, the most
balanced
general guidebook to Turkey. It covers
everything you really need to know including
what to see, where to stay, places to eat, how
to get around, and some general information on
history and culture. It has a few pictures, but
not many. It's generally better written than
some of the other guidebooks, but some people
find the organization a little difficult to
follow. It's easy to use once you get used to
it.
Buy it here.
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The
Lonely Planet Guide to Turkey Lonely Planet is by
far the most popular guidebook for Turkey. It is well
organized and comprehensive. It's not very interesting
to read but if I were lost in Turkey it would be the
guidebook I would most like to have with me. The 2007
edition is now available
Buy it here.
The
Eyewitness Guide to Turkey If you don't need hotel
and restaurant information but you do want lots of
pictures and maps and a sense of what there is to see
and do in Turkey, I recommend this guide from British
publisher DK. It has articles on history and food and
music as well as information on sights around the
country, neatly organized by region. The slick paper and
huge number of color photographs make it a little heavy
to carry around on your trip, but it is particularly
useful in the planning stage when you're trying to
decided what you really want to see.
Buy it here. They also do a nice guide to Istanbul.
The Blue
Guide to Turkey If you are particularly
interested in ruins, architecture, history or museums,
you should try to get your hands on a copy of the Blue
Guide to Turkey even though it is currently out of
print. When people ask me why I recommend it, I always
tell them to compare the section on Ephesus with other
guidebooks. The other guys usually have about a page.
The Blue Guide has seventeen.
Look for a copy here. (Don't use Amazon's out of
print search. They are always outrageously
expensive compared to AbeBooks)
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Time Out Istanbul The Time Out city
guides are great little books with lots of ideas
for things to do while you're in the city. They
are very good for finding the trendiest cafes,
the most interesting museums, the cutest
boutiques and the best spots for people
watching. They are written by English expats who
live in the city they're writing about so you
get kind of an insider/outsider viewpoint. Good
maps at the back, too. The 2007 edition for
Istanbul is now available.
Buy it here. |
Step by Step Ephesus by Mehlika
Seval Meli's own book about Ephesus, this
full-color, heavily illustrated hardcover book guides you
through all the fascinating ruins of this ancient city.
Meli lives just a few miles away from Efes (that's the
Turkish name for the site as well as the name of
Turkey's most popular beer) so it would be hard to find
a better guide.
Look for it here.
History & Culture
A Short
History of Byzantium by John Julius Norwich A
huge swath of Anatolian history took place under the
rule of the Byzantine emperors. This pared down version
of Norwich's three volume history of Byzantium takes you
on a whirlwind ride through a thousand years of coups,
assassinations, intrigues, and machinations. And really,
you have to love any author named John Julius, don't
you?
Buy it here.
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Lords of the Horizon
by Jason Goodwin A history of the Ottoman era by
a young author who has now turned to writing
murder mysteries set at the Ottoman court. I
can't say I admire Goodwin's non-linear style of
writing, but this is much less dry than any
other history of the time period that I have
found.
Buy it here. |
Turkey
Unveiled by Hugh and Nicole Pope A look at
modern Turkey by two expat journalists living and
working in Istanbul. They write well, they have
researched their subject extensively, and they love
Turkey and the Turks. So many books about Turkey are
written from such a critical viewpoint, it's nice to
read something from a sympathetic position.
Buy it here.
Ataturk:
A Biography of Mustafa Kemal by Lord Kinross It's a
big book and out of print, but if you want to know about
Turkey you should read it. When they call him the father
of the Turks, they really mean it. The book is well
written and gives a good account of the last years of
the empire and the early years of the republic.
Look for a copy here. The English edition is
subtitled "Rebirth of a Nation."
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A Traveller's History of Turkey by Richard
Stoneman If you want your history in a
quick, compact format, try this little book from
Interlink publishing. In less than 300 pages it
takes you all the way from archeology to current
events. This is part of very good series from
yet another excellent, small English publisher.
Buy it here. |
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A Muslim
Primer: Beginner's Guide to Islam by Ira Zepp
Of all the books that I have read (or tried to
read) on Islam, this one was the easiest to understand.
Zepp was a professor of comparative religion so he
really gets what a non-Muslim is trying to find out
about Islam. He talks about the history of the religion,
the difference between Sunni and Shiite, the religion's
influence on culture, as well as beliefs and practice.
It's clear, concise and very valuable to people
traveling in Muslim countries.
Buy it here.
World
Food: Turkey by Lonely Planet Sure,
there are zillions of great cookbooks on Turkish or
Mediterranean cooking but this little book is something
you can carry around with you as you travel. It has a
glossary of words you can expect to find on menus, but
it also talks about things like why Turks drink so much
tea and what all those delicious kinds of bread are
called.
Buy it here.
Berlitz
Turkish Phasebook In Istanbul and along the
Aegean and Mediterranean coasts you'll find plenty of
people who speak English. Once you move out of the beach
areas, it's helpful to have a good phrasebook or
dictionary. The Berlitz is my personal favorite of the
phrasebooks but there are others just as good.
Buy it here.
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Teach Yourself Turkish After my first trip
to Turkey, I decided to learn some of the
language. Turkish is fairly easy to pronounce
but the grammar is quite different from Romance
languages. I used this book and CD set and found
it was a really good way to get started. It has
grammar and vocabulary lessons,
fill-in-the-blank exercises, and dialogues that
are recorded on the CDs so you can get used to
the way Turkish sounds.
Buy it here. |
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Literature
My Name
is Red
by Orhan Pamuk Most of this Nobel Prize
winning author's books are rather dense and
inaccessible, even--in the case of Snow--rather
depressing. This one is, in my opinion, the most
readable. It is ostensibly a murder mystery set at the
Ottoman court among the painters who make the exquisite
miniatures for the emperor. The drama, however, is
really in the pulls between Eastern traditions and
Western influences, a drama that pervades life in Turkey
today.
Buy it here.
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Birds Without Wings by Louis de Bernieres
If you can't handle the idea of reading
Kinross's Ataturk, read this novel instead.
Chapters telling the sweet and sad story of the
inhabitants of a small village in southwestern
Anatolia during the days of the founding of the
Turkish Republic alternate with chapters about
the life of Mustafa Kemal. Easy history, well
written by the author of Corelli's Mandolin.
Buy it here.
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Tales
from the Expat Harem by Anastasia Ashman and
Jennifer Gokmen A collection of short non-fiction pieces
by non-Turkish women, mostly Americans, who are living
in Turkey for one reason or another. I found the quality
of the pieces in this anthology to be uniformly high
with some that were unexpectedly moving. Nice light
reading for a trip.
Buy it here.
Beyond
the Orchard by Azize Ethem Despite her exotic
sounding name, Azize is a nice English lady who met and
married an Ottoman prince. When they decided to build a
home on the Turkish coast, she wound up having to handle
things while he continued to work abroad. This simple,
lovely and very funny memoir differs from the usual "I
moved to a beautiful place and built a house" books
because of Azize's true affection for the local
villagers and the countryside.
Buy it here.
The
Lymond Chronicles by Dorothy Dunnett Okay, I'm
overdoing it here. This six volume novel is set just
before the reign of Queen Elizabeth I and stars Scottish
adventurer Francis Crawford of Lymond who travels
throughout Europe including Constantinople. After my
first trip to Istanbul I reread the entire six book
series just so I could properly enjoy the scene in
fourth book where he escapes through the cisterns under
the city. These are wonderful historical novels and
Lymond is an unforgettable character.
Buy them here.
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