Rating: 
Summary: Well versed, good history, very poor cultural antropology
Review: I found the book a delight to read for its subject and style. JS's prose and his interweaving of history with travel shows a talent with much promise. Unfortunately as the book progresses, the writer becomes narrow minded and condesending. One is kept from enjoying this other wise enjoyable book by feeling that the writer is being vindictive and untruthful with his hosts. I found most of his criticisms personnal and petty and I was sorry that his insincerity with people he encounterd and rivers he crossed made so much less of the book.
Rating: 
Summary: disappointing...
Review: I found this book to be boring. I kept hoping for it to get more interesting, have more color, more humor, more detail, but it just didn't happen for me. I have travelled to India and parts of Africa, but not Turkey. Maybe if I'd been to Turkey, I would have appreciated the book more. I read almost three quarters of it, and then just put it down. Maybe I was too hopeful that it eventually would be more alluring.
Rating: 
Summary: Confession
Review: I have to confess that I enjoyed the book. that's a confession because I can understand how it must offend many Turks. Anyone who writes about the politics and recent history of Turkey is bound to offend someone. I thought the author tried hard to present the different viewpoints of Turks, Greeks, Armenians and Arabs. The problem was that he also tried hard to be funny. Sometimes he succeeded, but sometimes the humor is at the level of the pun in the title. There is something ludicrous about the state prescribing what clothes people must wear. All governments, including Western ones, do this to some extent. He could have made the point more effectively without playing so obviously for laughs. Many countries contain poor and backward rural areas and fundamentalist religious groups
Rating:
Summary: O Fez, wherefore art thou?
Review: I liked this account of how Turkey, which is geopolitically between East and West, banished the fez in 1925 in the name of progress. In the early 1990s, Jeremy Seal searched throughout Turkey for an authentic fez-maker. His travels take him from big city to small town, where he encounters all sorts of people. In each area, he recounts a historical incident that had happened involving the fez and what it symbolizes. (It's a pretty powerful little hat!!!!) This is more a travel diary than an informative text, and as such it is rife with biases. Read for pleasure and entertainment, but don't take it as a guide to the Turkish culture and people.
Rating: 
Summary: For anyone who's ever wondered where the fez went...
Review: Ironically I went to Turkiye about the same time jeremy was publishing this book, and ironically I went in search of a real fez.....among other things,as well as to meet the in laws...this book is so too true! I looked for the fez, and got very similar responses! This book is best read by someone who's been there, or has at least more than a passing interest in Turkiye. Trust me, you will fall in love with the country and it's people all over again. Jeremy writes with warmth and humor. A joy to read again and again.
Rating:
Summary: How to wear a fez
Review: Jeremy Seal's "A Fez of the Heart: Travels Around Turkey in Search of a Hat" is a fun travelogue, but it's also a bit more. Seal may not quite have the historical sweep of a Jason Goodwin, the literary panache of a Bruce Chatwin or the daring of an Eric Hansen. But in pursuing his personal obsession with the fez (first imposed then banned a century later by regimes seeking to improve Turkey's image), Seal addresses some important cultural and aesthetic questions for the age of PoPoMo globalism. Must memes from traditional cultures be lost as the world gets smaller? And can "modern" or "western" admirers of those memes keep them alive as more than a poor parody of the original? Much of the music I find most compelling attempts be simultaneously reverent and irreverent as it mines traditional forms, but Seal finds that it is no longer possible to wear a fez without irony. I fear that as goes the fez, so goes all traditional culture.
Rating:
Summary: A refreshing approach to travel literature
Review: Seal takes the position of a Fez researcher to romp around
Turkey during one winter and spring and it doing weaves a
tale of incredible cohesiveness. Even though I don't
believe that Seal as that observant eye of Theroux or the
scathing irreverence of Bill Bryson, using the story of
the Fez, he weaves the geography, society, politics, and
religion of a often misunderstood and abused country. The
fez, as a true object of interest, also metaphorically ties
the ambivalence of a country straddling East and West, modern and ancient, secular and religious.
Rating:
Summary: Orientalism at its worst
Review: The author apparently believes that Turks should wear fezez (and Swedes viking hats, and Americans fur caps etc) in order to satisfy his taste for the picturesque.
Rating: 
Summary: Unsuccesful
Review: The author of this book has concentrated on his own prejudices and expectations as well as on the realities of Turkey -- which are presented here as colored by those very prejudices. The attempt may not be completely worthless, but there exists a far better book out there: Buy Mary Lee Settle's "Turkish Reflections" instead of this.
Rating:
Summary: British Humor, Ancient History, Social Commentary - love it
Review: This book describes the people, cities and culture of Turkey with more practical experience and humor than any other I've read. From the streets of Istanbul to the border of Syria to the Black Sea, Mr. Seal accidentally (on purpose) gives a compelling account of the social changes in Turkey from the Ottoman Empire to the present while describing his search for the origin of the Fez hat. This would be a great book to read during downtime in Turkey, but probably better before or after - you need to relax during downtime while you're there.
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