A Short History of the Ottoman Empire

First-rate book (written as an undergrad survey text, but accessible to general readers) on one of the world's longest-running, and often misunderstood, empires, whose collapse still reverberates. An astute analysis of how a multiethnic and relatively tolerant empire devolved into the perpetrator of the Armenian genocide after a century of wars and ethnic cleansings on all sides. As is fashionable, the author claims that the empire's second half (1600-1922) was characterized by change and adaptation rather than decline, but this becomes increasingly incredible after 1750.