This is an interesting book. The cover is dreadful, one expects to find typical Sunday school material within. However by chance I opened it at the section dealing with discoveries of ancient artifacts near the great lakes. This is something I had never heard about and so I was taken to read on. The author of the book is obviously a confirmed creationist,and it seems she feels that the existence of the ark is evidence for the creationist viewpoint. I am out on this since I believe that the existence of the ark would prove only the existence of the ark, not that the theory of evolution is totally wrong.

The book is not hysterical in tone nor does it make wild, irrational claims. The author makes no attempts to promote her religion, whatever variety it is. It simply puts forward evidence of repeated sightings of an object on the slopes of Ararat, and points out that the descriptions made in all the reports are very similar. Most of the material quoted was unknown to me. I could not make a judgement of the possible validity of the evidence without undertaking more reseach. I am glad I read the book and it gave me a lot of interesting leads for furthur investigation. That for me, is a good read.

This is a fine work for a general audience: clear, concise, and to the point. For those preparing for a trip to Turkey, or those who simply want to learn more, this would be a fine place to start. One should not be misled by the title, however. This work does not cover only the Turkish Republic, but considers the history of Anatolia "from time immmemorial" to the present. With such a ambitious agenda, and only two-hundred pages to work with, this makes for a lot of simplifications.

For people with a better knowledge of Turkey, this work will probably be too shallow to be really satisfying. For those who want academic treatment of modern Turkey, Erik Zurcher is still the best available. For those who want a more critical, journalistic treatment of the Turkish Republic, try Hugh and Nicole Pope's Turkey Unveiled.

Most wild turkey texts are concerned with hunting the Eastern and Rio Grande subspecies in the Eastern flat lands. Higley has written the only book I have seen concerning hunting the Merriam and Rio Grande subspecies in the Western Mountains. I have only hunted turkeys in the West, and my experience is that the texts concerning Eastern flat land hunting have limited application to the Western Mountains. Higley has captured the Western differences in a simple, easy to follow 153 page book which is appropriate for novice and advanced Western turkey hunters.

Anyone considering hunting turkeys in the Western Mountains could gain from the insights of this book. As an examination of the Contents shows, Higley takes the reader from a review of the origins of Western turkey, through the differences from the flat lands concerning equipment, locating, hunting, safety, even game and trophy care. Higley includes a state by state review and a list of useful contacts. For some reason, the book lacks an index.

Far too many outdoor writers use photographs and tall tales of their hunting prowess to fill in for a lack of content and actual knowledge. Refreshingly, Higley avoids this trap, using stories and photos when relevant to demonstrate actual points.

Understanding the differences and following the methods described in this book will increase the chances of a successful Western turkey hunt.

I read this book some years ago and found it invaluble to anyone who hunts wild turkey in the new england states. Instead of giving general turkey hunting info or focusing on southern states as many books do, this one tells about tactics for the northeast and gives a lot of historical turkey data for each of the new england states. Unfortunately, I lost my copy a few years back and since I was able to locate it at Amazon.com I will be buying a new one. Mike Koffink

Insight's City Guides combine stunning photography with literate text and a smattering of basic travel information. The Insight Venice guide is worth adding to your bookshelf, but its practical advice is getting a bit long in the tooth and its heft makes it less than ideal as a take-along guide. - Durant Imboden, Venice for Visitors, http://govenice.miningco.co

I quite enjoyed Ellery Queen's remarkable 1932 story, The Greek Coffin Mystery. Noticing a book with a similar title, I next read Eric Ambler's, A Coffin for Dimitrios, a classic spy novel involving intrigue in Istanbul shortly before the start of WWII. A few days later I stumbled across a 1952 movie (Five Fingers) about actual espionage in Istanbul in late 1943. Subsequently, I found a detailed account of this particular espionage case in Barry Rubin's Istanbul Intrigues, a fascinating account of "espionage, sabotage, and diplomatic treachery in Istanbul, the spy capital of WWII".

In retrospect, my rather circuitous route from an Ellery Queen mystery to a well-researched military history seems fitting, as Rubin's description of WWII Istanbul was absolutely Byzantine. Seventeen intelligence organizations competed for critical information. Double agents, triple agents, and even quadruple agents were the norm. The Turks were rightly concerned with a possible German attack (Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, and Greece were already occupied), but they feared Russia even more. They considered the United States as foolishly naïve in its belief that Stalin would not continue to occupy Eastern Europe and the Balkans after Germany's defeat. And they did not entirely trust the British either.

The Turkish intelligence organization, the Emniyet, was remarkably effective and somehow managed to keep track of the convoluted intelligence operations practiced by the Germans, the Russians, the British, the Americans, and the lesser powers.

I was sometimes overwhelmed by the detail in Rubin's account and I occasionally found myself skimming some sections. Nonetheless, I strongly recommend reading Istanbul Intrigues. Not only is this good history and good melodrama, it has immediate relevance to current events in Turkey, Iraq, and elsewhere in the Middle East and the Balkans.

We encounter a suicide attack on Franz von Papen, the opportunistic and devious German ambassador. We meet Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli, the Vatican's legate and apostolic vicar to Istanbul's few Catholics. He was in disfavor with the church hierarchy for speeches critical of Benito Mussolini. Later Roncalli becomes the ecumenical Pope John XXIII. Contrastingly, we become acquainted with disreputable characters like Andre Gyorgy who combined lucrative smuggling with espionage services for the Hungarians, British, American OSS, Zionists, and unknown to these four groups, he also worked for the Germans.

If you read only one chapter, you might try The Valet Did It (chapter 15), the story behind the English film, Five Fingers. Released in 1952, the movie, a purported true account, was based on a 1950 book by Ludwig Moyzisch, the SD's Ankara chief. (The SD was the intelligence arm of the Reich Security Ministry, one of the three competing German intelligence operations in Turkey.) Barry Rubin's research illustrates that the full story was far more complex than Moyzisch himself realized, and has more twists than most contemporary spy novels.

Although well-researched and apparently quite accurate, footnotes are not available. However, Rubin did provide some appendices that can be quite helpful: Selective List of Code Names for OSS-Turkey, List of Intelligence Organizations operating in Turkey, List of Individuals Interviewed, an extensive Bibliography, and a good Index.

Istanbul Intrigues was originally published by McGraw-Hill in 1989, reprinted in 1992 by Pharos books, and recently (2002) has been republished by Bosphorus University Press. New and used copies are available via the Internet.

Barry Rubin is a recognized expert on Middle East affairs. He has published 16 books, edited another 17, and is the editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs. His works include the widely acclaimed The Transformation of Palestinian Politics (Harvard, 1999) and The Israel-Arab Reader (Penguin/Putnam, 2002). He has taught at Hebrew University, Tel Aviv University, Bar-Ilan University, Georgetown University, the Middle East Technical University in Ankara, Turkey, and the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. He is currently teaching at Hebrew University's Harry Truman Center. He contributes articles to the prestigious Foreign Affairs journal.

Karen's class is writng reports about someone they are thankful for. Karen writes about Merry, her nanny. And Karen's class wins a real turkey! they don't know where to keep the turkey so karen takes him. But she only has to keep him for a few days. But one day Merry lets the turkey out by mistake. If you read it you will find out how Karen and Merry catch him.

I'm in 7th grade and found this book helpful in getting an overview of Ataturk's accomplishments. It helped me to decide where to research further. The pictures were good. It's a little hard to find books (and websites) about him written in English, but this is a good one.

The Ottoman naval commander and cartographer Piri Reis (1475-1554) played a leading role in transmitting the discoveries made on Columbus' first voyage to the New World to the inhabitants of the Muslim lands around the Mediterranean. His work is known from fragments of two world maps, and from his Kitab-i-Bahriye (Book of Seamanship), which he illustrated with hundreds of charts derived principally from medieval portolans. The Khalili Portolan Atlas is a fine, hand-drawn example of the cartographic tradition established by Piri Reis. It also contains a series of city views, including unprecedented depictions of Galata, on the northern shore of the Golden Horn, and of Candia in Crete, which reflect the vitality of Ottoman topographical painting in the late 17th centure. Professor Soucek shows how Piri Reis' works represented a fusion of the Islamic world view with European map-making traditions, modified by his own experience as a navigator, and by the recent discoveries of Columbus. The third part of his study is devoted to a detailed analysis of the contents of the Khalili Portolan Atlas.

Una gran España imperial, una impresionante Venecia marina, la rica Génova, los estados pontificios y la Orden de Malta se unen para enfrentar a los invencibles turcos otomanos. El libro relata el contexto, el antes y el después de la batalla, que, si bien, tuvo un efecto efímero en el campo político-militar, es un punto de no-regreso en la historia del mediterráneo y de Europa y Asia, en general. Ahora, para el lector aficionado, es un libro de lectura no tan fácil y de corrientes sinuosas. Esto principalmente debido a un cierto grado de Erudición del libro y a que las cartas "[E]stan scriptas [e]n Español antiguo" (Pero es realmente un placer leer esas cartas, en realidad no es un lastre). Sin embargo las cartas y los relatos son tan apasionantes que realmente lucen este trabajo. Lo recomiendo fuertemente para todo aficionado a la historia.