The articles compiled in Ottoman War & Peace. Studies in Honor of Virginia H. Aksan, honor the prolific career of a foremost scholar of the Ottoman Empire, and engage in redefining the boundaries of Ottoman historiography. Blending micro and macro approaches, the volume covers topics from the sixteenth to twentieth centuries related to the Ottoman military and warfare, biography and intellectual history, and inter-imperial and cross-cultural relations. Through these themes, this volume seeks to bring out and examine the institutional and socio-political complexity of the Ottoman Empire and its peoples. Contributors are Eleazar Birnbaum, Maurits van den Boogert, Palmira Brummett, Frank Castiglione, Linda Darling, Caroline Finkel, Molly Greene, Jane Hathaway, Colin Heywood, Douglas Howard, Christine Isom-Verhaaren, Dina Rizk Khoury, Ethan L. Menchinger, Victor Ostapchuk, Leslie Peirce, James A. Reilly, Will Smiley, Mark Stein, Kahraman Şakul, Veysel Şimşek, Feryal Tansuğ, Baki Tezcan, Fatih Yeşil, Aysel Yıldız.

Viorel Panaite analyzes the status of tribute-payers from the north of the Danube with reference to Ottoman law of war and peace, focusing on the legal and political methods applied to extend the pax ottomanica system over Wallachia, Moldavia and Transylvania.

In "Conflict, Peace, and Prosperity in the Name of God," Murat Iyigun explores how longer-term developments influenced the spread of monotheistic religions and how these trends affected other societies and religions. He explores with the statistical methods of economics the way religions shaped the development of societies and framed the conflicts between and within them. Specifically, he asks why and how political power and organized religion became so swiftly and successfully intertwined, and then examines the role of religion in conflict historically, as well as the sociopolitical, demographic, and economic effects of religiously motivated conflicts." Conflict, Peace, and Prosperity in the Name of God "breaks exciting new ground in our understanding of religion and societies, and the conflicts between them."

This study of Ahmed Resmi, servant and critic of the state, offers new insights into Ottoman eighteenth-century society, emphasizing the impact of the 1768-74 Russo-Turkish war on an outmoded world-view, and the call for the reconstruction of the Ottoman polity.

"A remarkably readable, judicious and well-researched account" (Financial Times) of World War I in the Middle East By 1914 the powers of Europe were sliding inexorably toward war, and they pulled the Middle East along with them into one of the most destructive conflicts in human history. In The Fall of the Ottomans, award-winning historian Eugene Rogan brings the First World War and its immediate aftermath in the Middle East to vivid life, uncovering the often ignored story of the region's crucial role in the conflict. Unlike the static killing fields of the Western Front, the war in the Middle East was fast-moving and unpredictable, with the Turks inflicting decisive defeats on the Entente in Gallipoli, Mesopotamia, and Gaza before the tide of battle turned in the Allies' favor. The postwar settlement led to the partition of Ottoman lands, laying the groundwork for the ongoing conflicts that continue to plague the modern Arab world. A sweeping narrative of battles and political intrigue from Gallipoli to Arabia, The Fall of the Ottomans is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the Great War and the making of the modern Middle East.

This is a work of excavation of the modern history of Turkey, with the Kurdish question at its center, unearthed and exposed in Çandar’s captivating narrative. The founding of a Turkish nation-state in Asia Minor brought with it the denial of the distinct Kurdish identity in its midst, giving birth to an intractable problem that led to intermittent Kurdish revolts and culminated in the enduring insurgency of the PKK. The Kurdish question is perceived as a mortal threat for the survival of Turkey. The author weaves a fascinating account of the encounter between Turkey and the Kurds in historical perspective with special emphasis on failed peace processes. Providing a unique historical record of the authoritarian, centralist and ultra-nationalist—rather than Islamist—nature of the Turkish state rooted in the last decades of the Ottoman period and finally manifested in Erdoğan’s “New Turkey,” Çandar challenges stereotyped and conventional views on the Turkey of today and tomorrow. Turkey’s Mission Impossible: War and Peace with the Kurds combines scholarly research with the memoirs of a participant observer, richly revealing the author’s first-hand knowledge of developments acquired over a lifetime devoted to the resolution of perhaps the most complex problem of the Middle East.