If you are looking for a book to introduce you to the Ottoman Empire, and its last days, because you've got a very America- and Euro-centric view of history and are trying to expand, PICK A DIFFERENT STARTER BOOK.

I'm not quite sure if this book is mediocre, good, or excellent. It presupposes familiarity with people I mostly didn't know, and geography I don't know like I should. Even a modern map isn't much help, because of the complexity of the old countries and boundaries.

What did I learn?
1. There was some guy named Abdul Hamid who was the last sultan.
2. Mustafa Kemal was huge.
3. I get a little bit why some guy getting assassinated in Sarajevo started a war. Not really - the causes of World War I are still a mess to me, but unrest in the Balkans made land that Germany, Russia, England and France wanted to fight over, in a general imperialist way. Why was there a western front, though? Why was there fighting all over the place, instead of just this region? I don't really get it.
4. There was fighting and unrest where Europe, Asia and Africa merge before, during, and after.
5. Winston Churchill was First Lord of the Admiralty and was down in the Aegean and Black Seas even before WWI started, and was just itching to get in a fight.

It's a long book, though, told at a very thorough and detailed level. Told like someone describing a Monet painting a square inch at a time, without ever pulling back to show the view from 20 feet away.

Also, the book overuses the metaphor of the Ottoman Empire being a carcass to be carved up. Like 842 times I think. And relatedly (and I realize this is on me) I took the title to mean that the Ottoman Empire would come across as an actor in its own last years. Like in chess if I talked about Otto Mann's endgame I'd mean what moves Otto Mann made as the game wound down. In this book the Ottoman Empire comes across just as an object. A pawn, as it were.

Extremely refreshing take on the fall of the Ottoman Empire, starting with the Balkan wars and ending with the Turkish Defeat of Greece in 1923. McMeekin's thesis is that the Empire never had a chance in the First World War: due to its exhaustion in the First and Second Balkan wars, and being completely overmatched by its opponents. He dismisses the Skyes-Picot agreement as the reason for modern middle eastern turmoil citing that the Ottoman Empire was already experiencing ethnic issues before the war. Ataturks revival and rebirth of the Turkish state was extremely impressive, but also relied on intelligent state building that gave Turkey natural ethnic and geographic boundaries that still exist today. My one criticism is that the battle descriptions are way too detailed and long.

Out of the ones that were written in English, this is the single best book I've read on the collapse of the Ottoman Empire so far. McMeekin's writing is intriguing, his method is meticulous, his scope is vast.

What he's doing isn't exactly new, but he's doing it just right: He's reframing the 'solution' to the Eastern Question as 'the War of the Ottoman Succession', and retelling the story of the last 15 years of the Ottoman Empire in the vast context of the dissolution of an empire, taking into consideration the stances of every player and focusing on the most important turning points.

This isn't the story of Modern Turkey, this isn't the story of the Kemalist revolution, this is quite literally the 'Ottoman Endgame'. McMeekin isn't interested in the dynamics of the Kemalist revolution, he's merely putting it into the correct context within the scope of his work. In framing the happenings of the era as the War of the Ottoman Succession and focusing on each country's efforts to benefit from it to the fullest, McMeekin enables himself to tell a truer history of the region, placing the Ottoman collapse and the creation of modern Turkey at a central position in the making of the modern Middle East, while still including the perspectives of the British, the French, the Germans, the Russians, the Greeks and the Arabs. This allows him to conclude that Mustafa Kemal's national revolution was in and of itself the Turkish solution to the War of the Ottoman Succession and it succeeded tremendously.

It's not a complete history, it's doubtlessly not without fault, but McMeekin's background and unique skillset seem to have given him the opportunity to tell the story of the last 15 years of the Ottoman Empire with a unique scope and a soulful narrative, baring the essential facts to the keen eye.

As far as I'm concerned, this is essential reading for any Westerner who's interested in early 20th century Turkey.

I had so much hope for this book. I’ve been reading Robert Massie’s books and thought “Gee, what happened to the Ottomans? They were such a powerful force.” From the title and the book jacket synopsis, I thought I’d found the perfect book. But then I started to read the text. After forcing myself through sentences such as “And the famous Hatt-1-Humayan, or Reform Edict, of 1856, issued even while foreign troops still blanketed Constantinople, was so obviously shaped by European influence that it aroused more resentment than appreciation among Ottoman Muslims, many of whom were not sure why they had fought and died in a war so as to forfeit their legal supremacy over Christians, and - in one of the most notable reforms - to allow church bells to ring in Constantinople for the first time in centuries.” I realized I just do not care for this author’s writing style.

Loved reading this. Best sleep I ever got!

Very good history of the final years of the Ottoman Empire. Mr. McMeekin provides insights into the dynamics of the genesis of the Middle East as we know it today.