1453: The Holy War for Constantinople and the Clash of Islam and the West (2005)

I really enjoyed this. It's a good narrative of a time period I didn't have a lot of familiarity to begin with, and it manages to give enough baseline information for a newbie in an engaging way while moving the story along. Loved how 1453 covers political, warfare tactics, religious implications and culture seamlessly. ( )

A fine, if at times sensationalistic, recounting of the capture of Constantinople by the Ottoman armies in 1453. Crowley largely limits himself to telling the narrative of events, based on the various (at times unreliable or contradictory) written sources by eyewitnesses or contemporary historians. A richer book would have looked at the why as well as the what, exploring the structural factors behind the rise of the Ottomans from disaster a mere generation before (when they were crushed by Tamerlane), behind the Byzantine decline, behind the Italian presence in the east, etc. But 1453 wasn't bad for lacking this, merely less deep than it could have been. Read this to get the story and look elsewhere for the meaning. ( )

Constantinople: The Last Great Siege, 1453 Well written book about the fall of Constantinople. ( )

In what started around 640 AD with a message from Mohamed (Prophet) to Heraclius (Roman Emperor of Byzantium) to surrender Constantinople finally materialized after numerous attempts and chartered a path for Islam’s head-on collision with the West .
29th May 1453 – The final unfolding of events the battle at 1:30 AM and lasted almost 12 hours , changed the course of history exemplifying the word now infamously known as “Jihad” . Roger Crowley details the vicious 53 day siege laid by 200,000 strong army on Constantinople lead by a 21 year old Arab Sultan Mehmet II who dealt a cataclysmic body blow to an already fractured Christendom(Roman Catholicism & Orthodox Christianity) . ( )

To be honest, I had hoped for more than just the tale of the fall of Constantinople. For example, I had read somewhere that it was because of the fall of the 'Eastern Rome' (Constantinople) that Ptolemy's lost Geographia had been re-found to the West. This geography, written by Ptolemy in the 1-2C AD using 8,000 known geographic points was instrumental in helping Europe launch its cceanic explorations that eventually led to the rounding of the Cape of Good Hope in 1488 and Vasco de Gama's landing in Calicut 10 years later. But there was no mention of the map or where it might have been stored, or smuggled or rescued from the city, if the story is even true. Nor were there any other ties to broader topics aside from a half-page of how the invention of the printing press helped fan the flame of European Xenophobia. So if you are looking for more than the day-by-day story of the siege of Constantinople--riveting as it is--this isn't the book. On the other hand, it's a ripping good story full of bloodshed and brave deeds, and a fast (especially if you skip all the repetitive bits) and easy read, so if you were asleep in World History, this is an easy way to fill in the gap. ( )