The lands surrounding the Black Sea share a rich and fascinating past.
Though in recent decades they have experienced ethnic conflict, economic collapse, and interstate rivalry, their common heritage and common interests run deep. Now, as a region at the meeting point of the Balkans, Central Asia, and the Middle East, the Black Sea is more important than ever.
Ranging from the ancient Greeks to the petroleum politics and ethnic disputes of the 1990s, The Black Sea investigates the myriad connections that have made the Black Sea more of a bridge than a boundary, linking religious communities, linguistic groups, empires, and later, nations and states.
King’s work has all the virtues of good American scholarship: the vast array of sources … a transatlantic detachment, and the recent and very welcome fashion for elegant prose.
Times Literary Supplement
An essential book for anyone who feels they ought to know about what used to be called ‘the Eastern Question’ and worries, secretly, that it is too late to start finding out.
The Guardian
The general reader and the specialist will read King’s book with pleasure and profit. May it encourage other scholars to turn their attention to a much neglected region.
International History Review
Lively, readable, and enthralling.
East-West Review
Mind-broadening.
Foreign Affairs
This is a book of enormous scope that excels in innovation and fresh insight … A book covering 2,700 years in 276 pages would appear to face formidable obstacles. Charles King, however, puts all doubts to rest. His argument does not waver and his strokes of insight surprise us on every page. This is one we all ought to read.
