text: I have been slogging through this book for weeks now, it was a terrible shock to the system after John Julius Norwich's excellent book on Byzantium.  The book lacks any narrative thrust, often stopping and retreading events slightly out of chronological order and frequently bringing all forward motion to a halt by describing the intricacies of some bureaucratic office or another.  The one consistent thing throughout this book is the author's obvious agenda to "set the record straight" and prove that the Ottoman empire was far superior to its "barbaric" European contemporaries
  