... highly readable.

Inevitably in books like this, the narrative shoals for long, wonderful stretches on personal stories. Ottoman history provides no shortage of larger-than-life homicidal maniacs whose stories make for very colorful reading.

... oversimplification or airy generalisation is never advisable. Unfortunately Baer is not always free from oversimplifications himself. The book is marred by a predictable anti-western slant, with the enlightened Ottomans often compared favourably to the backward or intolerant European Christians.

Mr. Baer...organizes his material according to contemporary concerns such as minorities, women and sexual mores, thereby eking out surprisingly fresh insights from this hitherto well-plowed terrain. He doesn’t ignore chronology, but his structuring principle is to reset the conventional narrative.

Baer’s enthusiasm for the empire as a cosmopolitan, European-oriented and tolerant state will surprise some readers. He is right to argue that the Ottomans were more tolerant than the Europeans, who expelled the Muslims from Spain and instituted the Inquisition to persecute the forcibly converted Jews. I would argue this is not a unique feature of Ottoman genius, but a tradition of Muslim statecraft.

Baer offers a fuller, fresher view of the dynasty that ruled an empire for 500 years and helped shape the West as much as the Hapsburgs or Romanovs.

In his latest book, Baer...expertly captures the undercurrents of Ottoman history that he says made the empire’s rule perilous at times.

Baer’s elegantly written narrative is full of bloody state building—a new sultan was expected to murder his brothers to keep them from challenging him for the throne—along with intriguing, counterintuitive takes on Ottoman culture.