Designed for general readers of nonfiction and history, this book looks at the time between the first and second World Wars, and the transformation of multicultural Constantanople to Turkish Istanbul. The book uses a single site, the Pera Palace, as a framework for the book. Created in the late Victorian era as a grand hotel for tourists arriving on the Orient Express, the Pera Palace was--through its grand days and long into decline--a meeting place for foreigners from all over the world with interests in the region. The author traces their stories, which often decamp to other locations, from Le Corbusier and New York to the assassination of Trotsky in Mexico, but the book returns always to local issues such as Turkish feminism, and to the chaotic and unexpected transition from the Ottoman Empire to Turkey, from the city of Constantine with its Greeks and Jews, Muslim Ottomans and foreign intrigues, to the capital of a nation of Turks. An appendix offers academic-quality endnotes, a glossary of Turkish terms, and a chronology of events. For general readers who wish to know more about a region sure to soon return to the news, and for academic professors and students of history or regional studies who want a history that is reliably factual but written in an attractively readable style. Annotation ©2015 Ringgold, Inc., Portland, OR (protoview.com) Read Less