A great history of the fall of Constantinople. It's amazing that so many details of the era were recorded. The book includes the build up to the war, great descriptions of land and sea battles, and what the aftermath meant for the region and world. ( )

Goes into great detail. Good coverage of undercurrents, such as attitudes of Byzantines toward Western Christians and visa versa and reasons what many Byzantines prefered being ruled by the Turk. ( )

An engaging and ultimately very excellent account of the siege in 1453 that spelled the end to the Byzantine Empire and its capital city of Constantinople to an army of Ottoman Turks under Sultan Mehmed II which could rather easily stand besides Steven Runciman's own account of the same events. Crowley begins his account by describing the history between Islam and the Byzantine Empire prior to the years before 1453 - from the initial entirely surprising movement out of Arabia of the warriors of Islam, the rapid loss of Egypt, Syria, and other eastern provinces, through the disaster at Manzikert, and the rise of the Ottomans. Thereafter Crowley gets into the more rigorous discussion of the lead up to the siege with items such as the relations between Mehmed II and Constantine XI, the gradual closing of the sea lanes towards Constaninople, and the last doomed efforts by the Byzantines to reunite the Catholic and Orthodox Churches - all briskly told in a style that is perfect for the kind of popular history that 1453 is. The actual siege itself takes around a half of the book and is entirely gripping throughout. Crowley does well to offer a rather unbiased account of the siege, describing the types of atrocities that were committed by both sides and maintains evenhanded descriptions of the various personalities that pop-up throughout the narrative. At one point Crowley relates that Mehmed II upon entering the city and entering the Haigia Sophia finds one of his own soldiers desecrating the church, and subsequently has the man executed and those few remaining Greeks in the building given their freedom - certainly not the image of the savage Turk that might surface in other accounts. Besides a pure narrative of the events, the author also manages to impart some important elements of tertiary knowledge as well - the state of mid-fifteenth century siege craft for instance.

On the whole an excellent book - though you may also want to grab hold of Runciman's book as well. ( )

A book someone should make a movie about. Had to read it for an Ottoman history class and was not to thrilled about doing so until I began to read it. Very good account of the fall of Constantinople and a lession to us all. ( )