The twenty two essays collected in Turkish Language, Literature and History offer insights into Turkish culture in the widest sense. Written by leaders in their fields from North America, Europe and Turkey, these essays cover a broad range of topics, focusing on various aspects of Turkish language, literature and history between the eighth century and the present. The chapters move between ancient and contemporary literature, exploring Sultan Selim’s interest in dream interpretation, translating newly uncovered poetry and exploring the works of Orhan Pamuk. Linguistic complexities of the Turkish language and dialects are analysed, while new translations of 16th century decrees offer insight into Ottoman justice and power. This is a festschrift volume published for the leading scholar Bob Dankoff, and the diverse topics covered in these essays reflect Dankoff’s valuable contributions to the study of Turkish language and literature. This cross-disciplinary book offers contributions from academics specialising in linguistics, history, literature and sociology, amongst others. As such, it is of key interest to scholars working in a variety of disciplines, with a focus on Turkish Studies.

Modern Turkic Languages is an introduction to the field of Turkic studies designed and written for teaching purposes. The book may be useful to a broader readership, including general linguists and linguists specializing in languages other than Turkic. After a general introduction and classification of the Turkic languages, the twenty-eight main chapters of the book provide various kinds of information about the entire family. Apart from its concise presentation of language-specific features and text materials in the original orthography, the book has two unique features that are not available in other publications. First, it provides transcriptions and interlinear glosses of the language samples, secondly, each sample is accompanied by an audio file that brings the `dead' letters of the book to life. This rich collection of audio files is the first of its kind and provides a plethora of opportunities for linguistic analyses and classroom discussions.