No comments about The War Dispatches of Stephen Crane.

No comments about The Great Extirpation of Hellenism & Christianity In Asia Minor.

5 comments about Ionian Vision: Greece in Asia Minor, 1919-1922.

1. As a Turk if you are interested in the other side of the story this is the perfect book which has most of the missing pieces of the puzzle. You have to consider the fact that the author used to be the British ambassador to Greece and he shares the same prejudices about the Ottoman minorities with the other Western intellectuals. Under these circumstances his work is a really neat and unbiased account of the facts of the era.



2. I started reading this book on a lark and quickly became enthralled with it. It explores a subject I have previously only vaguely heard about, the Greek "Asia-Minor catastrophe", which led to the expulsion from Turkey of 1.2 million Greek Christians, many of whose ancestors had lived in Asia Minor for the millenia since the Hellenistic era.

   The Greeks, egged on by the British, who had promised them "valuable territorial consideration" for their allegiance to the victorious allies in World War I, occupied - pursuant to the Treaty of Sevres - the region of Asia Minor surrounding the ancient Greek city of Smyrna on the Aegean Sea. The ostensible reason for this occupation was to protect the largely Greek population of Smyrna from the rise of Turkish nationalism associated with the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. However, underlying the expansion to Smyrna was the dream of uniting all of the millions of Greeks living under foreign powers (from Cyprus to Rhodes to Smyrna to Constantinople and the Black Sea region of Pontus) into the Greek nation. This idea of a resurrected "Greater Greece" was appealing as well to many European Philhellenes, particularly in Britain.

   What happened to wreck the dream of a "Greater Greece" - a Greek state incorporating the predominantly Greek regions of the former Ottoman Empire (perhaps even including Constantinople) - is immensely complicated, but an oversimplified explanation is as follows: After the Greek political party which had championed the Smyrna/Greater Greece cause lost the election, and the British (who favored the losing party and were in any event seeking an accomodation with the Turks) withdrew all economic and military support for the operation, the Greek army was gradually forced to abandon Asia Minor, leading to the uprooting of the Greek populations of all parts of Turkey, who were "exchanged" for much of the Turkish populace of Greece, in perhaps the largest internationally-sanctioned "ethnic cleansing" in modern history. The ensuing economic and sociological catastrophe devastated Greece, reducing the country to virtually a Third World status from which it did not emerge for generations, and cast a pall over its politics through the late 20th century. It has also left the Greeks with a profound sense of betrayal by Britain.

   Llewellyn Smith, formerly British ambassador to the Hellenic Republic, has written a reasoned and balanced account of the forces underlying the catastrophe. His writing style is entertaining, and he includes fascinating insights into the Byzantine deal-making which occurred behind the scenes, and which involved not only the fascinating post-WWI leaders of Greece and the other allied countries, but also the glamorous Greek international jet-set of the time, whose wealth, influence and entree in British society was ultimately of no avail, but whose occasional appearances lend the story some romantic appeal.

   Ionian Vision is a worthwhile book for anyone with an interest in history. The story is particularly relevant in light of the present situation in the Baltic countries, where the Christian versus Muslim ethnic rivalries left over from the Ottoman Empire are still turning neighbor against neighbor and destroying nations.




3. I started reading this book on a lark and quickly became enthralled with it. It explores a subject I have previously only vaguely heard about, the Greek "Asia-Minor catastrophe", which led to the expulsion from Turkey of 1.2 million Greek Christians, many of whose ancestors had lived in Asia Minor for the millenia since the Hellenistic era.

   The Greeks, egged on by the British, who had promised them "valuable territorial consideration" for their allegiance to the victorious allies in World War I, occupied - pursuant to the Treaty of Sevres - the region of Asia Minor surrounding the ancient Greek city of Smyrna on the Aegean Sea. The ostensible reason for this occupation was to protect the largely Greek population of Smyrna from the rise of Turkish nationalism associated with the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. However, underlying the expansion to Smyrna was the dream of uniting all of the millions of Greeks living under foreign powers (from Cyprus to Rhodes to Smyrna to Constantinople and the Black Sea region of Pontus) into the Greek nation. This idea of a resurrected "Greater Greece" was appealing as well to many European Hellenophiles, particularly the British.

   What happened to wreck the dream of a "Greater Greece" - a Greek state incorporating the predominantly Greek regions of the former Ottoman Empire (perhaps even including Constantinople) - is immensely complicated, but an oversimplified explanation is as follows: After the Greek political party which had championed the Smyrna/Greater Greece cause lost the election, and the British (who favored the losing party and were in any event seeking an accomodation with the Turks) withdrew all economic and military support for the operation, the Greek army was gradually forced to abandon Asia Minor, leading to the uprooting of the Greek populations of all parts of Turkey, who were "exchanged" for much of the Turkish populace of Greece, in perhaps the largest internationally-sanctioned "ethnic cleansing" in modern history. The ensuing economic and sociological catastrophe devastated Greece, reducing the country to virtually a Third World status from which it did not emerge for generations, and cast a pall over its politics through the late 20th century. It has also left the Greeks with a profound sense of betrayal by Britain.

   Llewellyn Smith, formerly British ambassador to the Hellenic Republic, has written a reasoned and balanced account of the forces underlying the catastrophe. His writing style is entertaining, and he includes fascinating insights into the Byzantine deal-making which occurred behind the scenes, and which involved not only the fascinating post-WWI leaders of Greece and the other allied countries, but also the glamorous Greek international jet-set of the time, whose wealth, influence and entree in British society was ultimately of no avail, but whose occasional appearances lend the story some romantic appeal.

   Ionian Vision is a worthwhile book for anyone with an interest in history. The story is particularly relevant in light of the present situation in the Baltic countries, where the Christian versus Muslim ethnic rivalries left over from the Ottoman Empire are still turning neighbor against neighbor and destroying nations.




4. This book tells a rarely told story about one of the greatest human catastrophes of the 20th century - the destruction in 1922 of the Greek Community in Asia Minor by the Ottoman Turks. The story of the destruction of a community which had lived in the West Coast of today's Turkey since before the time of Homer. I say, "rarely told" because it is story that is indeed "rarely told" to anyone who is not Greek or Turkish. The author, Michael Llewellyn Smith, does an extraordinary and, I might add, well- balanced job in telling this fascinating story to the English-speaking world.

   In a gripping narrative, coupled with unequalled scholarship and detail, this book tells the tragic story of Greece's ill-fated dream for a "Greater Greece" - the Greek Irredentist Passion of the early twentieth century - and the fascinating characters, English, Greek and Turkish (among others) who played profound roles in shaping of this story. The dream of a joint Anglo-Greek Entente in the eastern Mediterranean - a dream shared by Prime Minister Lloyd George of England and Eleftherios Venizelos of Greece, which ended on the bloody and burnt quays of Smyrna in 1922 and haunts the psyche of every Greek to this very day.

   To all readers who are interested in the history of 20th-century Greece, this book ,along with Mark Mazower's "Inside Hitler's Greece", is required reading.

   As an aside, in the paperback edition, on page 31, there is a description of some "ethnic cleansing" committed by the Turks on "Old Phocea" - "a seaside town of about 9000 inhabitants, in June 1914". As I read the description, my heart began to beat rapidly. My father - aged seven months at the time - was one of those who survived. I suppose I am here to write these few words, all these many years later, because he did, in fact, survive.

   Lovers of well written and accurate history will love this book!




5. For most Hellenes and many Orthodox-Church followers the Asia Minor Catastrophe is only second to the Fall of Constantinople. The description of an event of such an historic dimension is by itself a riveting story even to a party that is rather unfamiliar with the larger episodes that surround it. This by no means reduces the quality of unrivalled research and scholarship displayed by the author. The enthralling text itself is written using a conventional yet fine diplomatic style that is most enjoyable.

   This book, together with other historic references to this calamity, clearly shows that the involvement of the Great Powers in Asia Minor was turned out to be of paramount significance in influencing the events of that period. Furthermore, this `involvement', as often it is the case with history, it has continued for many years, indeed up to the modern times, to cast its inexorable shadow to the future of an area that, for millennia, has been an integral part of the cradle of the Western civilisation.

   The main criticism is that it is rather surprising that such a detailed, well-presented and balanced piece of work, dedicated in describing the Minor Asia disaster itself, does not include further information pertinent to what it is largely considered to be as the highlight of this affair: the Destruction of Smyrna. Indeed, it feels rather appropriate that a whole chapter should have been dedicated to this particular event not just in order to commemorate the magnitude of human loss and drama that took place but, equally as important, to throw more light as to the reason(s) why such an important and vibrant Mediterranean port should be totally left to the menace of an avenging army.

   In the period from mid 1921 to the day when Smyrna was destroyed what was the position of the Americans? Furthermore, was there ever a point during the aforementioned period where the British government, unequivocally, made it `crystal clear' to the Greeks that no aid of any sort will be forthcoming?

   Finally, are there any plans for the book to be translated in other languages such as Greek, Turkish, French etc?

5 comments about Smyrna 1922: The Destruction of a City.

1. I was born and raised in Izmir (Smyrna). My mother's family was also exiled from the Greece during the WWI and settled down in Izmir. I saw the book while I was surfing in the net. I thought that I should read the every book written about my city. In my opinion the book is a routine sample of hatred against Turkish nation. Let's forget fact that the Turks are the only nation who are blamed of conducting massacres and atrocities (even genocide), while they were fighting for their independence and briefly review what happened during those times.
   
   Perhaps the question to ask is that why same kind of events did not happen before? Why Turks had waited 500 years to burn the city? Izmir was in the borders of Ottoman territory for more than 500 years and none of these events described in Dobkin's book happened before. This cause-effect type relationship is not being explained in the book.
   
   Thanks to power of Greek and Armenian diaspora on U.S. and French intelligentsia, we have been hearing the atrocities of Turks for so long. Author forgot to mention from ethnic cleansing of Balkans from Turks. Millions of Turks were deported during which people were massacred in the late 1800s and early 1900s in the Balkans. Same kind of massacres, atrocities were first happened in Balkans. At the end of the WWI, allied powers used Greeks to clean western Anatolia from Turks. They attempted to end the very existence of Turks. Local Greeks and Armenians were provided guns. Their cruelity was no match for the event told in Dobkin's book.
   
   I could not find the honesty and self-criticism of Greeks and Armenians in the book. Almost every nation Turks, British, French, American and Italian are blamed except Greeks and Armenians.



2. This reviewer who states that "the Greeks and Armenians began an aggression" certainly makes a sweeping statement which is unsupported by fact: There was NOT any aggression, certainly on the part of the Armenians, who were a pacifistic nation and did not even have any military forces! I predict that the reason this book lacks an account of Armenian aggression is because there is nothing to support that position (I can't speak to Greek history). When one continues to see and hear accounts of atrocities which have in common the hatred which prompts them, eventually one must conclude that these atrocities were in fact real. To think that Armenians were aggressive only proves the reviewer's lack of knowledge about Armenian culture.



3. As a Smyrnean and Greek on my father's lineage, I read the book in one shot yesterday. Having lived half of my life in Smyrna, among the now non-existent Greek community, I have met many elders in my youth, who were witnesses to the atrocities documented in the book.
   It was really though reading through the pages and pages of fisthand accounts of this once beautiful city, now a place of cement blocks, immigration and a vast monument of genocide at the center that Turks call Kültürpark (Cultural Park) where once stood the Armenian quarter and some of Inetnetional/Greek neighborhoods.
   The tragedy of the city under Temurlane and Turks were identical hence the centuries of time interval between them.
   Although I hate to put the blame on a nation (or on several for that matter; the British, French and to an extend the Americans were also to blame as well as Turks) the denial of the historical facts of 1890-1925 in Asia Minor by modern Turkey makes one to linger in angst.
   Housepian-Doubkin is an intersting read although greater emphasis was given to the Armenian population living in the city in 1922 in the book. And although the aim of the Turks primarily to get rid of the Armenians in Asia Minor when torching the city, they hardly discriminated the vast Greek population of Smyrna. On the contrary, the atrocities that followed the Lausanne Agreement and throughout the modern history of Turkey puts a special emphasis on the Greek population of Asia Minor and Constantinople so that now only 1500 Greeks live in an area where more than 2.500.000 lived in 1919.
   Visitors to Northern Aegean region (Troy) can visit the graves of Greeks and Armenians who fought with their Turkish brothers against the British and Anzacs just a few years before their mothers and sisters were raped and killed after their noses, ears and eyes were cut out.
   I also strongly suggest to anyone who wish to reply to this post with Greek atrocities of the time, first to research the number of Turkish causalties during the so called Turkish Independence war.



4. What this book lacks is a context. The reader may think that these events happened out of nowhere. The author does not mention how the Turks were treated in Greek invasion of the city. He does not mention how the mosques were torched, peope were peed onto etc... Or, how the Balkans were ethnically cleansed from Turks which they hold a majority. Greek nationalism gave rise to Turkish nationalism. So, cause and effect principle. Greeks are the victims of a movement which they caused at first place.



5. This an outstanding book. It shows clearly the treachery of all the WWI allies after 1919 how for the sake of oil and other business interests they sold down the river the Greeks, the Armenians and the Jews of Asia Minor to the Murderous and Genocidal Turks. It's appalling to see Western Navies' ships lining up their crews at the edge of the ships armed with bayonets cutting the arms off the people fleeing the Turkish massacre! They also distorted all reports about the genocide that took place in all of Turkey!

No comments about Disaster and Fiction: Modern Greek Fiction and the Asia Minor Disaster of 1922.

No comments about Saved by the Sword: A Romance of the Greco-Turkish War.

No comments about The Ashes Of Smyrna - A Novel Of The Greco-Turkish War 1919-22.

5 comments about The Maze.

1. At the end of the Greco-Turkish War, one Greek brigade wanders lost in the Anatolian desert. Led by Brigadier Nestor, the soldiers hope they are marching toward the sea and the end of their disastrous tour of duty. The war is over, but the men in Panos Karnezis's debut novel, THE MAZE, must battle on.

   Brigadier Nestor, an aging career soldier still devastated by his wife's death a year earlier, has become addicted to morphine and Greek mythology. His second-in-command, Chief of Staff Major Porfirio, while appearing to be a model soldier, is keeping a treasonous secret. The company priest, Father Simeon, imagines himself the Apostle of All Anatolians, but in fact is just a thief. And the rest of the brigade is not fairing too well either. Subsisting almost entirely on cornmeal, their morale is low and things are growing stranger the longer they wander.

   It seems though that the luck of the brigade is finally changing. First, a Greek pilot crashes from the sky bringing hope that perhaps they are being searched for. Then, following a runaway horse, they come across a quiet village virtually untouched by the war. The inhabitants and tales of the village are just as interesting and complicated as those of the brigade. The mayor is about to marry the madame of the brothel, the church is overrun with rats and the Turkish Muslim quarter is surrounded by an open sewer. This village does not offer the comforts the brigade had longed for. Brigadier Nestor still hopes to lead the men to the sea and escape, and the mayor knows the way. But before they can leave they must all contend with a desperate war correspondent and one final act of violence that permanently scars the village. This act oddly reflects another moment of violence that haunts the brigade and lies just beneath the surface of all they do.

   The brigade may finally escape the maze of the Anatolian desert, but each man is forever marred not only by the war but by what has happened since the war ended. The worst casualties may have nothing to do with battle.

   Karnezis's debut novel is fantastic. Unlike many war novels, the violence is something that exists for the most part in the margins, coloring the actions of the characters in a subtle and complex way. This story is really about the emotional effects of the war --- feelings of desperation, loneliness, anger, dissatisfaction and, literally and figuratively, wandering lost in the war's aftermath.

   Karnezis's writing style is clear and straightforward but without the coldness of, say, a Hemingway novel. The ideas, characters and situations are touched with something so unique that it seems to verge on magical realism, although nothing magical ever takes place. The characters are all realistically flawed. Several are actually quite mad but they remain sympathetic.

   THE MAZE offers an interesting commentary on war and aggression and its effects on individuals and communities. This is a recommendable novel and Karnezis is an author to keep an eye on.

   --- Reviewed by Sarah Rachel Egelman




2. This is the story of a lost Greek brigade in the Anatolian steppe at the end of WWI, presumably about to be routed (or at least rerouted) by Ataturk's resurgent Turkish army (see previous review.) This would be a five star book if it weren't for the intrusive footnotes which interrupt the text to explain an array of quite well known Greek myths, and a slightly offputting, Garcia-Marquesan distance between the author and his characters. Otherwise, a thoughtful book with impressive historical and psychological resonance.



3. one feels the desert's choke.....the town's hope, yet the sea does not deliver. a good easy read..if you put it down and pick it back up....latter...you will not miss a beat.



4. I read this for my book group, and like the other seven members who read it, found it to be a floridly written and somewhat interesting work that never seems to go anywhere. Part One of the book finds a Greek army unit wandering lost in the Anatolian desert at the tail end of the Greco-Turkish war of 1919-22. (One of the book's minor flaws is that other than a three sentence prologue, it doesn't give the reader any context for what the Greek army is doing in Turkey.) In any event, we meet only a few members of this dispirited unit, who are wandering in circles in the desert in their attempt to evade the Turkish army and make it to the sea, where they will be evacuated. At the head of this ship of fools is Brigadier Nestor, who hides from the world in his books of ancient mythology and vials of morphine. Meanwhile, Major Porfirio, the number two in command, wages a secret Communist propaganda campaign to little effect. Then there is the priest, who left his small parish to pursue his vision of being Apostle to the Anatolians, and is slowly going mad. The bulk of the wandering is shown through their eyes, although a Corporal, the Medic, and a downed pilot also play minor roles. For these first 140 pages, not a lot happens. The unit wanders a few miles a day, they start running low on food and water, and that's about it.
   
   Part Two begins in a local village, and introduces its cast of stock characters. There's the buffoonish mayor who's literally gotten fat off his office. His fiancee, the sophisticated foreign courtesan stuck in this dreary backwater. The schoolmaster, and the shopkeeper, neither of whom make much of an impression, an alcoholic newspaper correspondent, and finally a maidservant and a gardener who emerge as the only two people to really find happiness. The Greek soldiers manage to make it our of the desert and arrive at this town, shaking up the established order. Which makes it sound more exciting than it actually isómake no mistake, this is a slow novel. Events do build up to a fairly tragic climax which never feels fully paid off or legitimate, or even climactic, and the brief epilogue ends things on much more of a whimper than a bang. The overall effect one walks away with is that Karnezis has stiched together a series of unsubtle character studies revolving around the frailty and pitfalls of belief and what it takes to be happy in life.
   
   The writing is a bit of a mixed bag, which at times is very atmospheric, and at times too baroque and overdone. In the same vein, some of the similes are quite nice, but they frequently misfire and occur far too often. Although, it has to be acknowledged that it's quite impressive writing for someone who is writing in their second language. Characters rarely feel alive, and few have distinct voices. There are some nice moments of humor mixed in, gentle comic touches that provide a welcome change from the general defeated tone. Also scattered in are references to Greek mythology, which are footnoted and laboriously explained. There are no doubt, a number of biblical references mixed in as well, but as someone who never read the Bible, they passed me by. On the whole, it's not bad, just not that great, and I would hesitate to recommend it to others.



5. I really enjoyed the maze, so much I even contemplated giving it 5 stars instead of 4. It is a beautifully written book, very descriptive and pretty straight on the mark with its history.
   
   My only qualm with the book is that Greek names were not used for the Greek army stuck in Asia Minor, which I found quite odd...and it gets off to a slow start till the army enters the town. At times I thought are they going to wander the desert forever?
   
   Overall I would completely recommend this book, especially to any fans of historic fiction.

1 comments about Heirs of the Greek Catastrophe: The Social Life of Asia Minor Refugees in Piraeus.

1. Hirschon's book gives an account of the social life of the Asia Minor refugees. As a student of the classics I was impressed by the parallels with ancient Greek culture (although I won't make any grand claims about continuity over the millenia because I don't know very much about the intermediate history). A very good book if you're interested in learning about the traditional Greek lifestyle. Challenges the notion that urban/modern life and traditional/religious life are necessarily opposed. Because the population of Greece was so radically increased by the influx of refugees from Asia Minor (which destroyed continuity of Greek inhabitation of Asia Minor going back to antiquity) it is one of the most important events in modern Greek history. One of the strongest points of the book, I think, is the extensive quoting of phrases Hirschon heard uttered by the people on the street, often with the modern greek alongside her translation. These little sayings give a lot of insight into how the refugees made sense of their world, and are often pithy and enjoyable in their own right.

5 comments about Twice a Stranger: The Mass Expulsions that Forged Modern Greece and Turkey.

1. This book discusses the population exchange between Greece and Turkey that took place in th early 1920's. Many individuals think that all of Greece was liberated in the early 1820's and do not realize that the northern area remained as part of the Ottoman Empire. Once Mustafa Kemal called Ataturk succeeded in his goal to create one unified Turkey after the Balkan Wars and World War I, he sought to have only Turks in Turkey and the Greeks wanted only Greeks in Greece. The European Great Powers of World War I were not able to prevent the concept of one ethnic identity within one national boundary. So Greek speaking Turks in Greece and Turkish speaking Greeks in Turkey were mutually expelled. People were forced from the homes where they had forged bonds over generations and had shared a common language. When each group arrived to the destination purportedly "correct" for them, they were stangers who could not speak the language of their new homeland. The spiritual pathos and psychological suffering was horrific. The author of this book treats the topic with fair and even handed research and he presents a history that few today know. It is a superb retelling of a time receding in memory and Clark has provided a fine accounting for those who went through the repatriation.



2. A masterful book that illuminates a little-known bit of history, the mutually-agreed forced exchange of populations between Greece and Turkey in the early 1920's. Even those who think they "know" this subject matter are likely to learn something from Clark's careful exploration of how the human tragedy played out differently in each area, sometimes even for different groups of people within the same area. His review of the diplomatic and political machinations leading to the exchange is equally revealing, demonstrating that both the Greek and Turkish governments eagerly pursued the exchange agreement as the best outcome. Clark's last chapter makes some interesting observations on how Turkey's nationalist concept of itself will mesh (or not) with its EU aspirations. Finally, Clark's work gains authority by remaining even-handed throughout.
   
   The only weakness of the book is Clark's argument that the Greek-Turkish exchange was so inhumane that it neither could, nor should, serve as a model for any future resolution of mixed populations. To me, that's unconvincing -- the suffering described here pales by comparison with some of the violence that has been visited on populations that were not exchanged. Still, it's unlikely to be repeated, because the appropriate conditions (two willing governments) are unlikely to recur.



3. My maternal grandparents were Orthodox Christians from Cappadocia. As a child I was told I was Greek; they were Greek, yet they spoke mostly Turkish. I noticed the other Greeks I met in the community were different than my grandparents. When I got to high school, after having lived in Greece for a year, I began asking questions of my grandmother, who told me many details of their Christian lives in a small town outside of Kayseri,then of the march out of Cappadocia, the ship to Greece that ran out of food as they had nowhere to put the refugees, finally debarking and being housed on the floor of a church until the parishioners got angry. She told me they were lucky; her father got a job as a teacher in orphange, as he was educated, a teacher certified by the patriarchate and so ended up on Evia at an American run orphanage. My grandfather and great uncle had escaped with false visas more than ten years earlier. I never fully understood why, based on my reading, the accounts of my grandfather and his brother having to escape at age 14. Now I do. Now I understand why the accounts that I've read from different regions of Anatolia are so different. I appreciated the author's methodology to get to every ethnic and regional group, and all the political parties that put their two cents in and influenced all these people who didn't want to go anywhere.
   
   I have read all the history books and personal accounts I could find but all were clearly heavily biased and didn't reflect all of my grandparents' accounts. My grandparents never spoke ill of the Turkish people, only the Turkish soldiers. I wondered why my grandmother constantly referenced clothing, music, food, or anything to being Turkish-like. I wondered how they came to be called Greeks when my grandfather's written family history shows them having lived in the same valley for at least three hundred years. His ancestors were Persian; my grandmother's were from one of the -stahn countries, southeast of the Caspian Sea. Their family photos looked Mongolian, not Greek.
   
   I once asked my grandmother how she could leave her home, her parents and siblings in Greece to marry a man she'd never met in the United States. (She never saw her parents again and didn't see her siblings for forty five years.)Her answers were forever etched in my mind.
   
   First: She didn't like the Greek "boys" and where they were living wasn't "home." The man she was to marry was from her own village, and although she didn't know him other than to have seen him at church he was their kind.
   
   Second was a lesson for my own marriage and a theme discussed in the book when refugee Christians moved into Muslim homes and shared their homes until the Muslims were deported. "Any two people can live together forever and be happy, if they both work at it." It seems that any two peoples can live together forever and be happy, if there are no politicians involved.



4. The sadness of this book is personal. I had a mother who was evicted from her part of the world in Western Greece into Anatolia, and I know she was twice a stranger in her new homeland. Her birthplace erased from the maps, she wanted to go see it again. Never did.
   
   I don't like to read depressing books about insolvable problems in the Middle East, but this one is very timely. The only solution in Iraq will be just such a separation of the factions into several independent areas. So the more things change, the more religious hatreds cause pain and loss to true believers.



5. This book has been a true disappointment!
   
   The author places the death toll of Armenians as at least 600,000 [page 9] and at most 800,000, the death toll of Greeks at 300,000 and fails to acknowledge the plight of the Assyrian Christians completely but states that 2.5 million Turks were killed in what was a "mutual slaughter" [page 13]. Revisionist propaganda that closely follows the denialist works of Justin McCarthy and Standford Shaw.
   
   This book attempts to play down and minimize the sheer magnitude of the 1914-1923 Genocide of the Ottoman Christians as nothing more than a romanticized hardship where the Anatolian Christians suffered a plight tragically equal to that of their fellow Turkish co-citizens. The author achieves this by avoiding a crucial five year period and its events, namely 1914-1919.
   
   Let it be known that the Turkish army did not enter Smyrna on the 19th of September as the author claims but on the 9th of September [page 24]. This book is riddled with historical errors but perhaps this is not too surprising since the author lacks the credentials of a historian.
   
   AVOID!