Crescent & Star: Turkey Between Two Worlds

Kinzer, Stephen (signed)

ISBN 10: 0374131430 / ISBN 13: 9780374131432

Published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux, New York, 2001

About this Item

Hardcover in Near-Fine condition in a very good-plus dust jacket, 8vo, pages: xi,[i],252. Red paper-covered boards with black-stamped crescent and star, black cloth shelf-back with titles in red, map, index. Signed by Kinzer on title page; 5th printing. Light wear to spine head and upper tip of dust jacket, else very clean unmarked copy, not price clipped. Bookseller accession no.: 14159.

Seller Inventory # 002463

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Crescent & Star: Turkey Between Two Worlds
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, New York
• Publication Date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0374131430
• ISBN 13: 9780374131432
• Binding: Hardcover
• Printing: 5th or later Printin
• Condition: Fine
• Dust Jacket Condition: Near Fine
• Signed: Signed by Author(s)

About this title

Synopsis

If Turkey lived up to its potential, it could rule the world - but will it? A passionate report from the front lines

For centuries few terrors were more vivid in the West than fear of "the Turk," and many people still think of Turkey as repressive, wild, and dangerous. Crescent and Star is Stephen Kinzer's compelling report on the truth about this nation of contradictions - poised between Euroep and Asia, caught between the glories of its Ottoman past and its hopes for a democratic future, between the dominance of its army and the needs of its civilian citizens, between its secular expectations and its Muslim traditions.

Kinzer vividly describes Turkey's captivating delights as he smokes a water pipe, searches for the ruins of lost civilizations, watches a camel fight, and discovers its greatest poet. But he is also attund to the political landscape, taking us from Istanbul's elegant cafes to wild mountain outposts on Turkey's eastern borders, while along the way he talks to dissidents and patriots, villagers and cabinet ministers. He reports on political trials and on his own arrest by Turkish soldiers when he was trying to uncover secrets about the army's campaigns against Kurdish guerillas. He explores the nation's hope to join the European Union, the human-rights abuses that have kept it out, and its difficult relations with Kurds, Armenians, and Greeks.

Will this vibrant country, he asks, succeed in becoming a great democratic state? He makes it clear why Turkey is poised to become "the most audacious nation of the twenty-first century."

About the Author

Stephen Kinzer was Istanbul bureau chief for The New York Times and is now that paper's national cultural correspondent. He is the author of Blood of Brothers and co-author of Bitter Fruit: The Untold Story of the American Coup in Guatemala. He lives in Chicago.