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Tarih Notları: Bir Orta Doğu Tarihçisinin Notları (2014)

by Bernard Lewis(Favorite Author)

3.77 of 5 Votes: 2

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Arkadaş Yayınları

review 1: Say what you want about Bernard Lewis, his autobiography is one of an adorable absent-minded but brilliant professor of middle eastern history. His anecdotes and side-stories are interesting and witty, revealing many insights about the regions he studied. It is also full of many one-line zingers, such as his recount of asking a Turkish general on Turkey joining NATO, to which he replied, "The real problem with having Americans as your allies is you never knowing when they're going to turn around and stab themselves in the back."
review 2: A thoughtful reminiscence of a long and complex life spent on a long and complex part of history.The book starts out with a charming biographical segment, continuing up to his service in the Second World War. It is filled wit... moreh a combination of dry British and Jewish humor, and a lot of fun to read. From the 1930s onwards, it transitions more into his thoughts on the Middle East and its history.His work in history is extremely interesting and I will have to refer to it later. His thoughts on learning original languages and tenure are Although one is occasionally started by his statements, he at least attempts to justify his rationales. He discusses his feud with Edward Said, his former support of the second Iraq War (not any more) and the legal censure of his statements regarding the Armenian Genocide. Although he does recognize that a million or more Armenians died, he refrains from calling it the systematized method 'holocaust' as seen in Germany-WW2, and remarks there were officials efforts within the Ottoman Empire to stop it, of course with little or no success. Such a 'semantic' distinction seems to bode little meaning for the Armenians, but apparently everything to a scholar of history. He is, for the best majority of the time, very understanding of the Muslim world (as truly massive and detailed as it is), and offers some very optimistic reasonable suggestions as to their future and development, taking examples from Turkey and others. Yes, he does sometimes say something jarring or ugly, but this is a man who admired the history of a great civilizations and still, after 90 years and the decaying hope of the Arab Spring, still holds on to some of it. less

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