Following Jamie's spate of disrecommendations, Misha Glenny's Dark Market is crap. I liked McMafia a lot, and his book on the Balkans, but it's abundantly clear from the start that Glenny doesn't know anything about computers or geek culture, and will swallow pretty much anything he's told. It reads like an Internet panic story from 2000 or so, and it's strangely clumsily written to boot. The only thing I got from it was finding out, in passing, about the 1996 Turkish car crash involving a Parliamentary deputy, the chief of the Istanbul chief, and a heroin smuggler and contract killer. Rather disappointed by The Anatomy of a Moment, about the failed Spanish coup, as well.
On the positive side, Martin Gidron's The Severed Wing is one of the few Holocaust novels worth reading. (Terrible, terrible cover, though.) It's an alternate history with a swift Great War and no Holocaust, about a world with sixteen million Jews, abundant Yiddishkeit, Polish pogroms, and all that was lost, both in reality and in potential. It's frequently a little too smart with the alternate references - Bill Gates as a windows salesman, for instance - but it's clever and sad and sometimes beautiful.
Rather disappointed by The Anatomy of a Moment, about the failed Spanish coup, as well.
Any particular reason? (I've not read it, and don't suppose I'll ever have time to, but obviously I'm interested in the subject matter.)
Posted by: ejh | January 03, 2012 at 09:29 AM
There was slightly more to that crash:
Medics pulled out the bodies of an MP, a police chief, a beauty queen and her lover, a top Turkish gangster and hitman called Abdullah Catli.
Since you read very quickly, have you tried tackling the
Dream of the Red Chamber?
Posted by: skidmarx | January 03, 2012 at 09:59 AM
Any book recommendations on the '96 scandal, Ergenekon, etc?
Posted by: Alex | January 03, 2012 at 11:26 AM
There's the Perry Anderson articles in the LRB a few years back which, from a very vague memory, touch briefly on them.
Posted by: Richard J | January 03, 2012 at 11:29 AM
Briefly!
Posted by: Alex | January 03, 2012 at 12:53 PM
I think Anderson wrote a book on it didn't he? Or its touched on in his book on Europe.
And yeah the Misha Glenny book is terrible. Though I thought that his earlier book was decidedly iffy once you got away from the Balkans.
Posted by: Cian | January 05, 2012 at 05:51 PM