Do You like book The Siege Of Vienna: The Last Great Trial Between Cross And Crescent (2008)?
The events covered in this book qualify as truly epochal. A millennium into its history, the tide of Islam finally turned, apparently for good. (Or at least until further review.) The Turkish wave that flowed and then ebbed back across the Balkans before the combined might of Habsburg Austria, Poles, Franconians, Bavarians and Saxons was not the same as that first wave of Arabs whose commanders had prayed alongside Muhammad, and the rise of Christianising Europe was secured in this moment. The Scientific Revolution, invasion of the Americas, the Enlightenment, the Holocaust - all of this would be different had the Grand Vezier, Kara Mustafa, reduced Vienna instead of encountering the executioner's cord at the orders of his disappointed Sultan.So why did the first half of this book have to be so dull? The author clearly understands in depth these momentous events, their historical context and even the lie of the land. Yet almost half the volume seems to dwell on political minutiae. The tempo picks up once the Turks arrive at the gates, but by that point the reader is almost lost. This reader, anyway.I do not wish to be harsh, however, as the latter half of the book is perfectly engaging, if not bringing a surge to the pulse. And the consequences of this piece of history can hardly be overstated. An Ottoman Europe would have been a different animal to a Christian hegemony. Far from being a hegemonising theocracy, the Ottomans actually had a vested interest in letting subjects remain Christian so that they could be enslaved. Janissary troops in fact formed a large part of the military state that mobilised to besiege Vienna. The spread at sword-point of the Bible to the New World must necessarily have been different had Islam prevailed, but today's pluralistic and technological society could probably not have emerged in the same way or at the same speed. Might it have been a more tolerant Europe, a less murderous set of Empires, that resulted? This is very hard to say.So the book carries weight, and it's a shame that it had also to be so heavy. Truly, the tide turned at the gates of Vienna.
—Elliott Bignell