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Istanbul

READING AND TRAVEL GUIDE

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Get the featured set of Essential Reading, our top picks of what to read, and get free shipping on anything else you order.

Item EXTKY141. Buy these 4 items as a set for $61 including shipping, 15% off the retail price.
With free shipping on anything else you order.

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Istanbul, Memories and the City

by Orhan Pamuk

• BIOGRAPHY/MEMOIR
• 2006
• PAPER
• 320 PAGES

Nobel Prize-winner Pamuk writes with quiet grace of the city of his birth, celebrated in his many novels: a magical place of crumbling mansions and Ottoman riches, mingling Asian, Islamic, secular and European influences. (TKY99, $16.95)

Blue Guide Istanbul

by John Freely

• GUIDEBOOK
• 2011
• PAPER
• 352 PAGES

Freely's erudite, indispensable guide to the monuments, art and history of Istanbul. (TKY231, $24.95)

Lonely Planet Istanbul Encounter

by Verity Campbell

• GUIDEBOOK
• 2011
• PAPER
• 176 PAGES

With a section of not-to-miss highlights, pull-out map and a calendar of annual events. (TKY151, $12.99)

Istanbul Map

by Borch Maps

• 2011
• MAP

A laminated folded map at a scale of 1:11,000. (TKY65, $8.95)

 

Also Recommended

Culture Smart! Turkey

by Charlotte McPherson

• GUIDEBOOK
• 2006
• PAPER
• 168 PAGES

Take along this pocket guide to local customs, etiquette and culture. (TKY127, $9.95)

Eyewitness Guide Istanbul

by Eyewitness Guides

• GUIDEBOOK
• 2013
• PAPER
• 272 PAGES
• BEST SELLER

This superb guide to Istanbul features color photography, dozens of excellent local maps and a district-by-district synopsis of the city's attractions. Handsome, convenient and up-to-date, this is the guide to carry. (TKY86, $25.00)

Frommer's Istanbul Day by Day

by Emma Levine

• GUIDEBOOK
• 2012
• PAPER

A compact shirt pocket guide, ideal for a short visit, featuring remarkably good suggestions for everything from food, hotels and neighborhoods to shopping. With a separate foldout map of the city center. (TKY206, $13.99)

Insight Select Istanbul

by Insight Guides

• GUIDEBOOK
• 2011
• PAPER
• 192 PAGES

Suggested walks, out-of-the-way shops and the latest rooftop restaurants are all included in this discerning pocket guide. (TKY241, $15.00)

Lonely Planet Turkish Phrasebook

by Arzu Kurklu

• LANGUAGE & PHRASEBOOKS
• 2008
• PAPER
• 259 PAGES

With essential vocabulary for the traveler. (TKY115, $8.99)

Strolling Through Istanbul, The Classic Guide to the City

by Hilary Sumner-boyd | John Freely

• GUIDEBOOK
• 2010
• PAPER
• 494 PAGES

A new edition of Freely and Sumner-Boyd's indispensable (and hefty) guide to the history, monuments and culture of Istanbul. (TKY213, $19.00)

1453, The Holy War For Constantinople and the Clash of Islam and the West

by Roger Crowley

• HISTORY
• 2006
• PAPER
• 304 PAGES

In this well-paced history, Crowley recounts with drama the events surrounding the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks. (TKY114, $15.99)

A Short History of Byzantium

by John Julius Norwich

• HISTORY
• 1998
• PAPER
• 432 PAGES

A richly detailed and evocative history of the tumultuous span of the great empire from the fourth century to the 15th, brimming with intrigue, skullduggery, palace revolution and other treachery. (TKY18, $19.00)

A Traveller's History of Turkey

by Richard Stoneman

• HISTORY
• 2009
• PAPER
• 247 PAGES

An accessible, well-written overview of Turkish history from the Paleolithic to the present. (TKY13, $14.95)

Crescent and Star

by Stephen Kinzer

• CULTURAL PORTRAIT
• 2008
• PAPER
• 265 PAGES

This insightful anecdotal report on contemporary life, culture and politics in Turkey comes from a former New York Times Istanbul bureau chief, who is especially attuned to the powerful geographic position of Turkey and its multiple identities in Europe, Asia and the Middle East. (TKY64, $17.00)

Istanbul and the Civilization of the Ottoman Empire

by Bernard Lewis

• HISTORY
• 1989
• PAPER
• 187 PAGES
• FAVORITE

In this slim volume the great Islamic scholar describes the invasion of Constantinople by the Ottoman Turks on May 29, 1453, evoking the city at this pivotal moment in its long history. (TKY17, $24.95)

Istanbul, A Cultural History

by Peter Clark

• CULTURAL PORTRAIT
• 2011
• PAPER
• 256 PAGES

Peter Clark celebrates the history, architecture, literature and society of Istanbul. (TKY254, $15.00)

Istanbul, An Armchair Traveller's History

by Richard Tillinghast

• HISTORY
• 2013
• HARD COVER
• 343 PAGES

A celebration of a beloved city that he has known for 50 years (he was the editor-in-chief of Let's Go in the 1960s), the American poet Richard Tillinghast offers not so much a history of Istanbul but rather an impressionistic guide to its treasures, sites and soul as seen through its Roman and Byzantine, Ottoman and modern incarnations. (TKY272, $19.95)

Istanbul, the Imperial City

by John Freely

• HISTORY
• 1998
• PAPER
• 432 PAGES

A lively, anecdotal history of the city geared for the traveler. With historic and modern photographs and neighborhood maps. Freely concludes with a helpful, 60-page section on monuments and museums. (TKY23, $17.00)

Osman's Dream, The History of the Ottoman Empire

by Caroline Finkel

• HISTORY
• 2007
• PAPER
• 688 PAGES

An ambitious, scholarly history of an 600-year empire that, at its height, streteched from Central Asia to the Levant, Danube and North Africa. (EUR200, $21.00)

The Bridge, A Journey Between Orient and Occident

by Geert Mak

• HISTORY
• 2009
• PAPER
• 160 PAGES

Symbol at the heart of Istanbul, connecting East and West, Islamic and European, traditional and modern, Galata is a fitting subject for the gifted Dutch journalist's portrait of cosmopolitan modern Istanbul. (TKY209, $14.95)

The Oxford History of Byzantium

by Cyri Mango

• HISTORY
• 2002
• HARD COVER

An illustrated survey of the sweep of Byzantium, its culture, religion, politics, art and architecture, by a team of scholars. The diverse thematic essays cover the whole period from founding of Constantinople to the Ottoman conquest. (EUR210, $60.00)

The Secret History

by G. A. Williamson | Procopius

• HISTORY
• 2007
• PAPER
• 208 PAGES

This is historical mudslinging only a Byzantine could devise, a withering expose of the scandals, intrigues and infidelities of the splendid empire and the court of Emperor Justinian by none other than its official historian. (TKY11, $15.00)

Art of the Byzantine Era

by David Talbot Rice

• ART & ARCHITECTURE
• 1985
• PAPER
• 286 PAGES
• CURRENTLY UNAVAILABLE
>

Wide-ranging and literate, this thoroughly illustrated introduction to Byzantine art is an indispensable classic. (TKY22, $21.95)

Mosques of Istanbul

by Henry Matthews

• ART & ARCHITECTURE
• 2010
• PAPER
• 160 PAGES

A nicely illustrated overview, history and guide to the many splendid mosques of Istanbul. (TKY111, $29.95)

The Art and Architecture of Ottoman Istanbul

by Richard Yeomans

• ART & ARCHITECTURE
• 2012
• HARD COVER
• 260 PAGES

An erudite and fully illustrated overview of Istanbul's Ottoman artistic heritage, tracing the city's evolving art and architectural styles from the conqueror's arrival in the fifteenth century to the collapse of Ottoman rule at the close of the First World War. (TKY266, $75.00)

Turkish Reflections, A Biography of a Place

by Mary Lee Settle

• TRAVEL NARRATIVE
• 1991
• PAPER
• 253 PAGES

Settle's captivating travelogue is a richly detailed portrait of contemporary Turkey, its people, monasteries, myths, archaeological treasures and living traditions. Exemplary. (TKY08, $16.99)

An Evil Eye

by Jason Goodwin

• MYSTERY
• 2012
• PAPER
• 336 PAGES

Back from Venice, investigator Yashim is drawn into the mysterious and dangerous intrigues of the sultan's seraglio at Topkapi Palace In the fourth novel of Edgar Award-winning author Jason Goodwin's internationally-acclaimed Ottoman Empire Series. (TKY240, $15.00)

Istanbul Passage

by Joseph Kanon

• LITERATURE
• 2012
• HARD COVER
• 404 PAGES

From the author of Stardust, The Good German, and Los Alamos -- a gripping tale of an American undercover agent in 1945 Istanbul who descends into a murky, marvelously atmospheric cat-and-mouse world of compromise and betrayal. (TKY265, $26.00)

The Black Book

by Orhan Pamuk | Maureen Freely

• MYSTERY
• 2006
• PAPER
• 466 PAGES

This atmospheric, erudite and fast-paced mystery unfolds amidst the tumult of 1980s Istanbul, a city in transition. (TKY01, $15.95)

The Oracle of Stamboul, A Novel

by Michael David Lukas

• LITERATURE
• 2011
• PAPER
• 294 PAGES

A gloriously escapist story of a beautiful, crumbling empire and an extraordinary girl, this atmospheric first novel follows the fate of Eleanor, born in 1877 to a rug merchant in Constanta on the Black Sea, in the Sultan's court in late 19th-century Constantinople. (TKY246, $13.99)

The Rage of the Vulture

by Barry Unsworth

• LITERATURE
• 1995
• PAPER
• 443 PAGES

An atmospheric novel by the Booker Prize-winning author set in Constantinople during the last gasp of the Ottoman Empire. (TKY119, $14.95)

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