I normally don't award a rating of five stars to academic monographs, as I tend to reserve that high a rank for a book that is both excellent and worthy of general study, but this is one of those cases. The main point here is that Reynolds is making the argument that the conflict between Tsarist Russia and Ottoman Turkey was driven by international great power politics and a desperate hunt for political & military security, not the rise of the "national idea." The reality is that the concept of one land, one people, one nation is the enemy of multi-national empires. The irony here is that while the so-called Young Turks of the Unionist Party were seeking to preserve the empire in the face of organized efforts to dismantle it, Turkish nationalism came after the fact, as the inheritors of the Young Turk junta (men such as Mustafa Kemal) choose that path as the next best thing to preserving a Turkish-led empire once all the bets made in 1914 failed to pay off and all appeared to be lost.

Besides that this book also works very well as a deep history of the ethno-political strife still playing out in the region and of the great Armenian disaster of World War I; this is history that remains news. This is particularly since Reynolds has a real flair for explaining the machinations of the various participants in this particular "great game." ( )

This is a superb book of necessarily specialized appeal: you have to be interested in the detailed history of the Ottoman and Russian empires in relation to the Caucasus and Eastern Anatolia, in the period around WWI. But if you are, you absolutely must read this book; it's comprehensive, thoughtful, and well written, and describes events not from our hindsighted view (how things came to be the way they are) but from the view at the time, with no one knowing who was going to end up controlling the territory. You'll never look at a map of the region the same way again. ( )

Very interesting, readable book. It covers the period 1908-1918, focusing on the border problems between the Russian and Ottoman Empires. Also of concern during this period is Russia's quest to control Istanbul and the Dardanelles to ensure Russia's access to the Mediterranean Sea for commercial and military purposes. In the mean time....the Ottoman Empire is attempting to become 'Turkic' and unified. All this of course contributes to very confusing, increasingly desperate and ultimately dangerous situation. By the end of the war, both empires are swept away and dismembered.

Very readable, informative and an entertaining historical story. Highly recommend. ( )