Friday 20 January 2012

1453

I'm still on a medieval kick, and this is the latest book to come from this.  It chronicles the siege of Constantinople by Mehmet II, and how he was able to take the last Christian holdout in the Orient.  Though I know how it ended, Crowley's way of writing history was compelling enough for me to keep reading and see 'how' it ended.  Like any good storyteller he is always ready to let the reader know when events could have easily gone the other way, letting the reader form his own what ifs.  The characters and main actors of the story are sometimes fun and sometimes annoying.  And all the while Crowley doesn't preach to the reader and remind him/her that the dead on the battlefield were real people dying over religious differences or political ideologies.

Confession:  I secretly enjoy popular histories.  And at 262 pages this is a real slim history for a year that was probably felt centuries later.

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