"'A Traveler's Companion to Istanbul,' edited by Laurence Kelly (Interlink, 428 pages, $16.95). Perhaps the only world city to rival Rome and Beijing for sheer antiquity, Istanbul (formerly Constantinople, neByzantium) gets a literary volume that does justice to its long history in this smartly edited trade paperback. Kelly, whose father was Britain's ambassador to Turkey, is clearly in love with the city and its many incarnations. He selects rare and remarkable contemporary eyewitness accounts of the first years of Haghia Sophia, the city's great church (now a famous mosque), the 1453 sack of the city by Muslim forces, scenes in a Turkish bath circa 1540, and the 1938 death of Ataturk, founder of the modern Turkish state. The writing is vivid, detailed, authoritative and compellingly readable."
'A Traveler's Companion to Istanbul'
