Rating: 
Summary: Love Hate Relationship with Turkey
Review: I could write volumes about this book! Ah but to be restrained to a mere 1,000 words!
Whatever your interest in Turkey, I recommend this book highly as a must-read.
Stephen Kinzer knows and loves Turkey, in fact, he respects Turkey, though often he comes up on the side of chaos, separatists and a diplomatically cloaked disdain for the Turkish Military. In fact I got a little tired of him preaching to Turks, their Military, and the people in general, what they should or should not do. I happen to agree with the Military's sense of paranoia about the attacks on "Kemalism." Case in point: the recent election victory of the Islamists.
On the other hand, Kinzer has also taught me (I am an avowed Turkophile, to put it mildly), a thing or two, as well ... issues that I should have known about -- such as the fact that Turks do not have control of Bosphorus Strait -- and did not. Also, he writes about the Greek-Turkish relations, its misguided past and its present, warming trend, with relative fairness.
Alternatively, Kinzer made me want to snap my fingers and dance the zeibek by slapping my kneecaps onto the floor, send him a rose-engraved invitation for a shared bottle of raki along the moon-lit Bosphorus, as well as call him out for a bare-knuckled fistfight on cyberspace.
Enough said, right?
BUY Crescent and Star.
Rating: 
Summary: Oversimplified at best - on the edge of "naive" propaganda
Review: This book seems to have been written from a safe distance; maybe from the barcony of a five star hotel. It's oversimplified at best, although I have to say it does make a good attempt to describe the people of Turkey.
It's only when talking about the goverment and politics where Mr. Kinzer fails us. He fails to mention HOW a coutry with the most genocides in recent memory, and a military that runs things can be a true democracy. Conviniently skipping the genocides of Greeks, Armenians and Kurds jumping from the present to an ancient past that in no way connects to the current inhabitants in the area (who came from central Asia and in no way are associated with the history sang by Homer in the Iliad), he would have us think that history can be re-written.
History can help explain the present, because history shapes the present.
Very dissapointing.
Maybe Mr. Kinzer can make another attempt after he studies the history of the region.
Rating: 
Summary: Good "human" analysis - naive politically
Review: Overall this is a good book. It describes the Turkish people and the establishment in a very readable and enjoyable manner.I was however a little taken aback about the naive if not simplistic conclusions and perspectives given by the author. In particular the situations of the Kurds, Cyprus and Greece. This is not the place to get into a debate but, I do wish that Kinzer would refrain from oversimplifying very complex social and political situations with one sentence overviews. It does tend to mislead a reader who's not very familiar. Again, a great study of the Turkish people.
Rating:
Summary: Ortakoy, Istanbul from Bogazici Strait on the cover!!
Review: Great cover, great stories, I was delighted to find this informative book on Turkey. A good deal of the information may be elementary for natives but others will appreciate the introduction. Author is an enthusiastic, bright man who is right there in the crowd with the natives, not a high brow reporting from a distance. In fact he gets into places many Turks would not wander, such as the South East Kurdish area which has not been safe for decades due to Kurdish terrorism.
Rating: 
Summary: A NYTimes Man Who Knows How To Talk Turkey!
Review: Published in the same year but pre-dating 9/11, Kinzer may be forgiven his oft-repeated pat prescriptions for a more open democracy, unfettered by the military and considerations of national security. Kinzer's volume remains a very informative and well-written, if impressionistic, guide to much of the modern history, politics, and social life of Turkey and issues raised by the Kermalýsts, the Islamýc fundamentalists, the military, the Kurds, the Armenians, and Greeks. Along the way, Kinzer warmly introduces the reader to individual Turks and their way of life, marriage customs, raki, nargile salons and much more. It's only too bad that this relatively slim volume of 240 pages was not enlarged to deal with such important issues as the constraints of an outmoded educational system, the impact of inflation and political corruption, and the challenge of economic development in the context of the European Unýon. But no matter this volume's limitations, no traveller to Turkey should leave home without it!
Rating:
Summary: Great book
Review: A great look at Turkey by an outsider that captures the spirit of the country in transition - Kinzer "gets" the country and its people as foreigners generally rarely get to.
Rating:
Summary: A fair criticism of modern Turkey
Review: I don't know how much a Westerner would enjoy "Crescent and Star", but the book is a must-read for every free-thinking Turk. It isn't just another arrogant Western criticism of Turkey, full of silly prejudices based on ancient views of "the Turk" -- it is an honest, fair and friendly book that points to Turkey's flaws without scorning or insulting the Turkish nation because of them. So, unlike most of the previous critical books about Turkey, the main aim of "Crescent and Star" is not to show how far behind the West Turkey is in terms of civilization; its aim is obviously to encourage Turks to question the political status quo in their country and make the necessary drastic changes so that they can become a powerful, tolerant, multicultural, wealthy and happy nation governed by a fully democratic and in this sense truly European state.
Rating:
Summary: Poorly written and shallow.
Review: So poorly written I have trouble believing Kinzer was a NYT correspondent. The book is thin on interesting detail about modern day Turkey. It largely consists of a running, numbingly repetitive complaint by Kinzer about how the political & military elite don't allow true democracy in Turkey. True or not he has little more to say, and he delivers this message in the first pages... and in the conclusion to nearly every hectoring, preachy chapter. Compare this book to Kinzer's fellow correspondent, Elaine Sciolino's well-written recent book on Iran ("Persian Mirrors: The Elusive Face of Iran") -- I felt learned a great deal about modern life and politics in Iran; next to nothing about modern life or politics in Turkey. Skip it.
Rating:
Summary: Kinzer, first live like a Turk, then write your next book
Review: This is a well-written book, but as a Turk (meaning not necessarily in terms of ethnicity, but a person living in Turkey) I hardly agree with Kinzer's observations. One can easily say that Kinzer understands Turkey's problems. However, his solutions to these problems are oversimplified. Kinzer tries to define these problems from multiple view points, but fails to do so. Next time, he may try extending his stay, and live like a native. What he did until now is to live as a foreigner, or an advanced tourist, and wrote as if he lived like a native. If he had really understood Turks, he should have learnt that Turks tend to say the truth only to their friends. Foreigners are always foreigners and they are told what they wanted to hear. And being a friend in Turkey takes drinking Raki for many many years, not a few months.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent!
Review: Excellent! This book must be read as textbook in Turkish Schools instead of "Inkilap Tarihi" (Revolution History).
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