*FULLY UPDATED WITH A NEW FOREWORD* THE SUNDAY TIMES TOP TEN BESTSELLER WINNER OF THE BRITISH
ARMY MILITARY BOOK OF THE YEAR 2016 'Truly essential' Simon Sebag MontefioreThe final
destruction of the Ottoman Empire - one of the great epics of the First World War from
bestselling historian Eugene Rogan For some four centuries the Ottoman Empire had been one of
the most powerful states in Europe as well as ruler of the Middle East. By 1914 it had been
drastically weakened and circled by numerous predators waiting to finish it off. Following the
Ottoman decision to join the First World War on the side of the Central Powers the British
French and Russians hatched a plan to finish the Ottomans off: an ambitious and unprecedented
invasion of Gallipoli... Eugene Rogan's remarkable book recreates one of the most important but
poorly understood fronts of the First World War. Despite fighting back with great skill and
ferocity against the Allied onslaught and humiliating the British both at Gallipoli and in
Mesopotamia (Iraq) the Ottomans were ultimately defeated clearing the way for the making for
better or worse of a new Middle East which has endured to the present.
