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Rating: 
Summary: A Guide for Big Boys and Girls
Review: I lived and worked in Ankara for three years, and used this guide and its predecessor every time I visited Istanbul. If you want to get off the beaten track, or if you really want to understand what you're looking at, this is the guide for you. If you want something glossy and light, as some of the other reviewers seemed to have wanted, this isn't for you. It's an in-depth guide, meant for people who are interested in culture, history, and architecture. It's not a picture book, nor is it designed to let you plan where you'll stay or where you'll eat, though it does provide limited, good recommendations. In one year I'm returning to Turkey to live in Istanbul for four years. I'll be taking this guide with me to explore what I didn't get to see before, and I'll be sure to snap up a revised edition when it comes up for sale. I've lived overseas and have used other Blue Guides in depth -- Ireland, England, Scotland, Greece, and China -- this Blue Guide, as well as Blue Guide Turkey, is every bit the equal of the others. In fact, I think it's better.
Rating:
Summary: A Guide for Big Boys and Girls
Review: I lived and worked in Ankara for three years, and used this guide and its predecessor every time I visited Istanbul. If you want to get off the beaten track, or if you really want to understand what you're looking at, this is the guide for you. If you want something glossy and light, as some of the other reviewers seemed to have wanted, this isn't for you. It's an in-depth guide, meant for people who are interested in culture, history, and architecture. It's not a picture book, nor is it designed to let you plan where you'll stay or where you'll eat, though it does provide limited, good recommendations. In one year I'm returning to Turkey to live in Istanbul for four years. I'll be taking this guide with me to explore what I didn't get to see before, and I'll be sure to snap up a revised edition when it comes up for sale. I've lived overseas and have used other Blue Guides in depth -- Ireland, England, Scotland, Greece, and China -- this Blue Guide, as well as Blue Guide Turkey, is every bit the equal of the others. In fact, I think it's better.
Rating: 
Summary: Not up to the usual Blue Guide standard
Review: If you are a fan of dry, tedious and academic writing then this is the book for you. Yes, it's chock full of information and historical detail. Oh Lord is it full of detail. More detail than any human like me would need. Pages and pages on the architecture of ancient Istanbul and it's mosques. Vestibul, apse, minaret, pitch roof, and on and on. There's more but I'll never know because I couldn't get through it. This book is definately suited to fans of academia that puts one in the mind of a droning college professor. It reads like a textbook alright. I, myself, could not get through it without falling asleep.
Rating: 
Summary: Pure tedium
Review: If you are a fan of dry, tedious and academic writing then this is the book for you. Yes, it's chock full of information and historical detail. Oh Lord is it full of detail. More detail than any human like me would need. Pages and pages on the architecture of ancient Istanbul and it's mosques. Vestibul, apse, minaret, pitch roof, and on and on. There's more but I'll never know because I couldn't get through it. This book is definately suited to fans of academia that puts one in the mind of a droning college professor. It reads like a textbook alright. I, myself, could not get through it without falling asleep.
Rating:
Summary: Not up to the usual Blue Guide standard
Review: In general, one can trust the Blue Guide series to be accurate, precise and informative; this guide to Istanbul, one the other hand, is a disgrace to the series: I have just returned from a short trip having noted over twenty mistakes (about two a day!). These mistakes range from incorrect phone numbers for hotel and restaurants (at least three, but still excusable) to missing hotels, to unscholarly, opinionated blather about how Turks are choosing to develop their city (utterly inexcusable from an author with Freely's scholarly pretensions). In short, avoid this book!
Rating: 
Summary: Heavy stuff
Review: This is the detailed guide for someone with a fairly long stay in Istanbul and a serious interest in art and history. Compared with the Lonely Planet Istanbul it's not as readable and has less practical "how to get there" and "where to stay" information but it's usful once you're in a particular building and want to know more about it. Sometimes it tells you more than you want to know but it seldom tells less.
Rating:
Summary: The most accurate and detailed guidebook
Review: We used this book on our trip to Istanbul last week, and it was I was intimidated at first by all the historic detail, but I found this book better than any guide you could hire to navigate through millenia of history on the shores of the Bosphorus. It walks you through the sites, and gives the historic context for each. Very informative.It has a nice list of sites not to be missed in the front, in case your trip is brief, as was ours. I will always travel with this brand of book in the future. They recruit actual scholars of the area to do much of the writing.
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