Synopses & Reviews
Salonica, City of Ghosts is an evocation of the life of a vanished city and an exploration of how it passed away. Under the rule of the Ottoman sultans, one of the most extraordinary and diverse societies in Europe lived for five centuries amid its minarets and cypresses on the shore of the Aegean, alongside its Roman ruins and Byzantine monasteries. Egyptian merchants and Ukrainian slaves, Spanish-speaking rabbis refugees from the Iberian Inquisition and Turkish pashas rubbed shoulders with Orthodox shopkeepers, Sufi dervishes and Albanian brigands. Creeds clashed and mingled in an atmosphere of shared piety and messianic mysticism. How this bustling, cosmopolitan and tolerant world emerged and then disappeared under the pressure of modern nationalism is the subject of this remarkable book.
The historian Mark Mazower, author of the greatly praised Dark Continent, follows the city's inhabitants through the terrors of plague, invasion and famine, and takes us into their taverns, palaces, gardens and brothels. Drawing on an astonishing array of primary sources, Mazower's vivid narrative illuminates the multicultural fabric of this great city and describes how its fortunes changed as the empire fell apart and the age of national enmities arrived. In the twentieth century, the Greek army marched in, and fire and world war wrought their grim transformation. Thousands of refugees arrived from Anatolia, the Muslims were forced out, and the Nazis deported and killed the Jews. This richly textured homage to the world that went with them uncovers the memory of what lies buried beneath Salonica's prosperous streets and recounts the haunting story of how the three great faiths that shared the city were driven apart.
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"A vivid but ultimately tragic light shed on a vanished urban civilization." Booklist
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"Engrossing study...richly textured work....History on a grand scale, with themes to match." Kirkus Reviews
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"Using sound scholarship, Mazower brings Thessaloniki's Ottoman era vividly to life." Library Journal
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"[E]xhaustive, affectionate biography...a deeply researched account that becomes a portrait of the singular, vanished cosmopolitanism of the Ottoman Empire." Baltimore Sun
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"Mazower has succeeded so well at his task that scholars of all nationalities and religions will refer to this book as their principal source on the city." New York Times
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"Few works of history published this year will display his total command of source material...and his masterly synthesis of cultural, political, economic, intellectual, and social history..." Boston Globe
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"[A]n extraordinary book by a historian with a wonderful appetite for complexity." Newsday
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"[Mazower] tells his history with sweep, but doesn't neglect the human side. The book's sympathies lie with the ordinary people of all communities, uprooted by forces beyond their control." Miami Herald
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"This exploration into the soul of a Balkan ciy is both evocative and profound, a masterful addition to Mazower's work." Jad Adams, BBC History (Salonica was their book of the month for October.)
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"Salonica, City of Ghosts, is a wonderful evocation of the complex, glorious and tragic history of a city, with lessons both positive and negative for our present age. The author, as always, writes with compelling clarity and penetrating eye for detail." Anthony Daniels, "Books of the Year," Sunday Telegraph
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"Mazower is a formidable historian. Two of his earlier books, Inside Hitler's Greece and The Balkans: A Short History, rank as definitive works. He has produced a majestic work: the biography of a city, complete with soul and ichor." Moris Farhi, The Independent
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"A brilliant reconstruction of one of Europe's great meeting places between the three monotheistic faiths." The Economist
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"This is a brilliant and timely reminder that cities have played as important a role as states in the lives of their inhabitants." Philip Mansel, The Spectator
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"[Mazower] sensitively analyses the internal debates and divisions
which could be found within all the major communities." Noel Malcolm, Sunday Telegraph
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"Tragic, hopeful and beautifully written, Salonica, City of Ghosts shows how cities, as much as people, can be seduced by the prospect of escaping their own past and remaking themselves in ways unrecognizable to old friends." Charles King, Times Literary Supplement
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"Mark Mazower's new book is a necessary masterpiece; necessary because it fills a gap, and a masterpiece because it fills that gap so well." Louis de Bernieres, Times of London
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"[Mazower] does to perfection is to express the historical meaning of Salonica down the generations, authenticating his story with a multitude of contemporary quotations, from the 15th to the 20th century...explaining it all out of his profound scholarly knowledge." Jan Morris, The Guardian
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"Tragic, hopeful and beautifully written, Salonica, City of Ghosts shows how cities, as much as people, can be seduced by the prospect of escaping their own past and remaking themselves in ways unrecognizable to old friends." Charles King, Times Literary Supplement
Synopsis
From the author of the greatly praised Dark Continent comes a richly textured social history of the Aegean seaport that has been a crossroads of civilization since the dawn of Byzantium.
Synopsis
Levant is a book of cities. It describes three former centers of great wealth, pleasure, and freedomSmyrna, Alexandria, and Beirutcities of the Levant region along the eastern coast of the Mediterranean. In these key ports at the crossroads of East and West, against all expectations, cosmopolitanism and nationalism flourished simultaneously. People freely switched identities and languages, released from the prisons of religion and nationality. Muslims, Christians, and Jews lived and worshipped as neighbors.
Distinguished historian Philip Mansel is the first to recount the colorful, contradictory histories of Smyrna, Alexandria, and Beirut in the modern age. He begins in the early days of the French alliance with the Ottoman Empire in the sixteenth century and continues through the cities' mid-twentieth-century fates: Smyrna burned; Alexandria Egyptianized; Beirut lacerated by civil war.
Mansel looks back to discern what these remarkable Levantine cities were like, how they differed from other cities, why they shone forth as cultural beacons. He also embarks on a quest: to discover whether, as often claimed, these cities were truly cosmopolitan, possessing the elixir of coexistence between Muslims, Christians, and Jews for which the world yearns. Or, below the glittering surface, were they volcanoes waiting to erupt, as the catastrophes of the twentieth century suggest? In the pages of the past, Mansel finds important messages for the fractured world of today.
About the Author
Mark Mazower is professor of history at Columbia University and Birkbeck College, London. His books include Inside Hitler's Greece: The Experience of Occupation, 194144, winner of the Fraenkel Prize in Contemporary History and the Longman/History Today Award for Book of the Year. He lives in New York City.