Grand unified books thread

[Ed Anger]

Anabasis: The March Up Country,

Oh, man, are you ever asking for it. 

I gave up. Somebody else can rub his face in dog shit.

[jimmy olsen]

Anabasis: The March Up Country,

Oh, man, are you ever asking for it. 

I gave up. Somebody else can rub his face in dog shit.

I win! I win!

[Ed Anger]

Anabasis: The March Up Country,

Oh, man, are you ever asking for it. 

I gave up. Somebody else can rub his face in dog shit.

I win! I win!

Yep, you won.

[Sheilbh]

I just finished Giles Milton's 'Paradise Lost: Smyrna 1922 The Destruction of Islam's City of Tolerance'.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Paradise-Lost-Giles-Milton/dp/0340837861
It's generally very good and an interesting read.  It's very sad at the end.

However I was annoyed all the way through by the subtitle 'the destruction of Islam's city of tolerance'.  It seemed like that title had been tacked on to shift a few more copies from people interested in Islam, especially in a sort of negative way, since 9/11.  Basically I think they tried to make the book a bit topical with that title.  My problem with it is that in the book itself there's very little suggestion that it had much to do with Islam at all, indeed there's very little about Islam in the book.  The main problem that caused Smyrna's destruction seems to be racial.  That this was Ataturk's attempt to get rid of a number of troublesome minorities and though the brutality wasn't reprised this was just a prelude to St Lausanne.  The book quotes nationalist Turks discussing the 'race problem' and contemporary journalists saying that with this Turkey is ridding itself of the 'race problem' and except in the sense that Islam is a part of Turkish identity there is really very little about religion. 

It's really good but I was annoyed by the tacking on of a generally irrelevant sub-title

[Scipio]

Joe Abercrombie- Best Served Cold

A great follow-up to The First Law.

[Queequeg]

I just finished Giles Milton's 'Paradise Lost: Smyrna 1922 The Destruction of Islam's City of Tolerance'.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Paradise-Lost-Giles-Milton/dp/0340837861
It's generally very good and an interesting read.  It's very sad at the end.

However I was annoyed all the way through by the subtitle 'the destruction of Islam's city of tolerance'.  It seemed like that title had been tacked on to shift a few more copies from people interested in Islam, especially in a sort of negative way, since 9/11.  Basically I think they tried to make the book a bit topical with that title.  My problem with it is that in the book itself there's very little suggestion that it had much to do with Islam at all, indeed there's very little about Islam in the book.  The main problem that caused Smyrna's destruction seems to be racial.  That this was Ataturk's attempt to get rid of a number of troublesome minorities and though the brutality wasn't reprised this was just a prelude to St Lausanne.  The book quotes nationalist Turks discussing the 'race problem' and contemporary journalists saying that with this Turkey is ridding itself of the 'race problem' and except in the sense that Islam is a part of Turkish identity there is really very little about religion. 

It's really good but I was annoyed by the tacking on of a generally irrelevant sub-title

I was going to get this but ended up getting Taner Akçam's A Shameful Act.  Love that the author's name is Milton, though. 

I wouldn't call Turks-Greeks-Armenians different races.  Within Turkey are many different races, but the "Greek race" is as well represented in modern Izmir as it was in Homer's Smyrna, and all the genetic evidence I've seen would back that up for the most part.  You could call it an ethnic conflict, but seeing as how the ethnicities were defined by the faith I don't think it is ridiculous to call it a religious conflict masquerading as an ethnic one. 

[Sheilbh]

But if you do surely you should make that point somewhere in the book?  Almost the only mention of Islam is in the sub-title.

I use 'race' because that's the word that the Turkish nationalists and reporters quoted in the book used.

Edit:  And I don't think those ethnicities were defined solely by religion.  It was a large part but language and culture matter too. 

[Queequeg]

But if you do surely you should make that point somewhere in the book?  Almost the only mention of Islam is in the sub-title.

I use 'race' because that's the word that the Turkish nationalists and reporters quoted in the book used.

Hmm.  You've finished it, and everything?  I'd think it would be hard to write a history of Smyrna without at least mentioning the role Islam played in the Anatolian Turkish ethnogenesis (and, I'd argue, in the greater post-Göçmen Khanate Turkıc peoples as well). 

And Turkish Nationalists were and are, by and large, some of the foulest nationalists around, and among the worst sources of history or anthropology I've ever seen.  "Turk" is no more a racial category than "American", as it is not just the crossroads of Eurasian civilization but also an immigrant society.  I've had conversations in Turkish with one person who could have been tanned Japanese, one who could be Egyptian, and one who could have been Lithuanian. 

[Sheilbh]

Hmm.  You've finished it, and everything?  I'd think it would be hard to write a history of Smyrna without at least mentioning the role Islam played in the Anatolian Turkish ethnogenesis (and, I'd argue, in the greater post-Göçmen Khanate Turkıc peoples as well). 

It's not a history of Smyrna.  It's a history of Smyrna largely from the perspective of the great Levantine families, though also some Turks, Greeks and Armenians (I think the Jewish and Turkish perspectives were generally lacking) and it's focused on the world of Smyrna prior to WW1 and during WW1 (for example there's a remarkable story about the local Pasha trying to negotiate a separate peace with the allies).  It then deals pretty promptly with the Megali Idea and finally in more depth the destruction of Smyrna.

I'd say about 40% of the book is about September 1922.  The rest from around 1910-22.

[Queequeg]

It's not a history of Smyrna.  It's a history of Smyrna largely from the perspective of the great Levantine families, though also some Turks, Greeks and Armenians (I think the Jewish and Turkish perspectives were generally lacking) and it's focused on the world of Smyrna prior to WW1 and during WW1 (for example there's a remarkable story about the local Pasha trying to negotiate a separate peace with the allies).  It then deals pretty promptly with the Megali Idea and finally in more depth the destruction of Smyrna.

I'd say about 40% of the book is about September 1922.  The rest from around 1910-22.

Why on earth would you choose the Levantines?  It is like making a history of the Holocaust from the perspective of the Kashubians. 

EDIT: That's probably why the publishes made him pick "Islam's City of Tolerance".  Most people don't know either Smyrna or Izmir, or the Fire, and their only exposure to Levantines would probably have been the Turk in The Godfather.

EDITEDIT: Turns out I was wrong about that.  Virgil Sollozzo, "The Turk", got his name from his Turkish-like nose and the fact that he does business in Turkey.  I presumed it was because he was a Levantine, though come to think of it I have no idea why a Levantine would be able to speak Sicilian. 


IIRC from reviews that has been one of the primary criticisms, and the main reason I chose Shameful Act over Paradise Lost, brilliant as the title may be.

Have you ever read Middlesex or Birds Without Wings? The destruction of Smyrna is a huge event in both novels.  Both get some basic facts wrong (especially the latter, I'm half convinced  Bernières didn't read a whole book on late Ottoman Anatolia), but both are good.  Especially Middlesex. 

[Sheilbh]

Why on earth would you choose the Levantines?  It is like making a history of the Holocaust from the perspective of the Kashubians. 

Well I think it fits better with the title.  The American suburb with the American International College was nicknamed 'paradise'.  The Levantines did live in this very mixed world, perhaps more than other residents of Smyrna.  They'd descended from English, French and Italian foreigners in Ottoman Turkey, most of them remained (and led relief efforts) during the First World War.  Theirs was a blessed existence.  He gets far more Armenian focused during the story of the destruction itself but I think the Levantine focus makes Smyrna more of a paradise.  And it could be that Giles Milton is comfortable in English/French/Italian but not Turkish/Armenian/Greek so the Levantine diaries and interviews are more accessible sources.

I did, however, love the story of Hortense Wood who lived in the richest suburb.  She was in her 60s or 70s by the time of the destruction of Smyrna.  Apparently she shouted down, told off and generally scared the Turkish irregulars.  Her nephew remembers her standing in the middle of the square while guns are being fired and houses looted waving her umbrella round shouting Turkish insults and telling them to all go away

Her house was the only one in that suburb to survive intact and was later used as a meetinpoint for Ataturk (who she hugely admired).

[Syt]

My reading list for the sunny beaches of Fuerteventura:

Europe's Tragedy: A New History of the Thirty Years War
The Enemy at the Gate: Habsburgs, Ottomans and the Battle for Europe (siege of 1683)
The Pursuit of Glory: Europe 1648-1815
Die Verwandlung der Welt: Eine Geschichte des 19. Jahrhunderts (a 1500 pages tome about the long 19th century)

Backups if I finish too fast:
Napoleon's Wars: An International History, 1803-1815
and/or
Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia, 1600-1947
and/or
The Birth of the Modern World, 1780-1914: Global Connections and Comparisons

I don't plan to do anything else besides sleeping, eating, lieing on the beach or pool and reading a whole fucklot.

[Queequeg]

Does anybody know of any interesting books on Sumerian, Babylonian, Phoenician and Carthaginian civilizations, particularly their religion and government? 

[Sophie Scholl]

Haha, just going to keep asking till someone succeeds in recommending a good one?

[Queequeg]

Haha, just going to keep asking till someone succeeds in recommending a good one?

I usually only ask one request till I get one, and pretty often I get one.  This seems like a pretty interesting topic for most people, unlike, say, the Cilician Kingdom of Armenia in the early 14th Century.