Synopses & Reviews
Shaw's excellent treatise is a must for anyone researching roots in Turkey or the Ottoman Empire . . . well organized. . . . [and] impressively researched.
Dorot
Shaw points out many interesting facts of the symbiosis between Jews and Muslims as he traces the relationship of more than 600 years.
Choice
Especially recommended for college-level students of Jewish history and culture.
The Bookwatch
Over the course of the last 600 years, the existence of the Jews of western Europe was continually threatened. While many took refuge in the Eastern regions of Europe, particularly in Poland and Lithuania, many more found shelter in the dominions of the Ottoman empire and in the Middle East, where their reception was far more congenial.
This remarkable history, written by one of the world's foremost scholars of Turkish history, is the definitive account of Jewish life and history in this region. It is the story of the ideological and religious differences, and the hazardous but often successful cohabitation that characterized the life of the Jews of the Ottoman empire and, later, of Turkey.
Examining the economic, cultural, and religious contributions of the Ottoman Jewish community, Stanford J. Shaw, a master of Turkish history, here documents the role of Ottoman Jews in the early Zionist movement, in World War I, and in the Turkish War for Independence. His analysis of the structures of different Jewish communities, the relations between them, and the relations between Jews, Christians, and Muslims in this unique circumstance is engaging and incisive. As Shaw sifts through the centuries, it becomes apparent that the fortunes of the Ottoman Jews directly paralleled those of the Ottoman empire.
Shaw's extensive research in Ottoman, British, and French archives, as well as sources in Hebrew and Ladino, is supplemented by personal interviews with such major players as Haim Nahum Efendi, the last Grand Rabbi of the Ottoman empire, Rabbi David Asseo, Chief Rabbi of Turkey, and a number of prominent Turkish-Jewish scholars and businessmen.
Review
"This is a brave and brilliant book — and constitutes a quantum leap forward for global feminist theory." -Robin Morgan,
Synopsis
In 1979, Kathleen Barry's landmark book, Female Sexual Slavery, pulled back the curtain on a world of abuse prostitution that shocked the world. Documenting in devastating detail the lives of street prostitutes and the international traffic in women, Barry's work was called powerful and compassionate by Adrienne Rich and a courageous and crusading book that should be read everywhere by Gloria Steinem. The Los Angeles Times found it a powerful work filled with disbelief, outrage, and documentation . . . sexual bondage shackles women as much today as it has for centuries.
In The Prostitution of Sexuality, Barry assesses where we are 15 years later, how far we've come and, more importantly, how far we have still to go. Shifting her focus from the sexuality of prostitution to the prostitution of sexuality, Barry exposes the practice of teenage sexual exploitation and the flourishing Asian sex tour industry, emphasizing the world-wide role of the expanding multi-billion dollar pornography industry. The work identifies the global conditions of sexual exploitation, from sex industrialization in developing countries to te normalization of prostitution in the West. The Prostitution of Sexuality considers sexual exploitation a political condition and thus the foundation of women's subordination and the base from which discrimination against women is constructed and enacted. Breaking new ground, Barry convincingly argues for the need to integrate the struggle against sexual exploitation in prostitution into broader feminist struggles and to place it, as one of several connected issues, in the forefront of the feminist agenda.
Barry concludes the book with a sampling of strategies-- international, regional, local, and personal--that feminist activists have employed successfully since the early 1980s, highlighting new international legal strategies for human rights resulting from her work.
About the Author
Stanford J. Shaw is Professor of Turkish and Near Eastern History at the University of California, Los Angeles. Founder and former editor-in-chief of The International Journal of Middle East Studies and former president of the Turkish Studies Association of North America, he has held previous appointments at Harvard University, the University of Washington, and Bosporus University, and is the author of numerous pioneering books and articles on the peoples and history of Turkey and the Near and Middle East.