Yesterday, to my surprise and delight, I received a copy of Maps of Istanbul, Haritalari, 1422-1922, from Egber And and Selmin Akar, two friends from Turkey, and former students of mine from Robert College, class of 73' and 74.' When I was in Istanbul this past October, 09', Egber was putting the finishing touches on this amazing book, and even then, I knew it would be a spectacular edition. But having quickly leafed through it yesterday, it has even surpassed my expectations. First, the book itself is extraordinarily packaged, with a sturdy book sleeve, to keep the cover in good shape. The colors of the cover, greens, reds, ivory and purple, of one of the maps give a good idea of what's inside, spectacularly beautiful maps. reproduced so it almost seems as if you are looking at the originals. And though it's published in Turkey, all of the Turkish text is parallel by English on the opposite side, no doubt increasing the audience for this book, as it should. The book begins with interesting introductions to the putting together of this work, a brief history of the city, and then commentary on each of the maps, thus it's much more than a map, almost a history of the city but gives 'voice' to the almost 500 maps. I have read the various introductions, interesting in themselves, but look forward with relish to systematically going through the book, a couple of maps and annotations at a time, and hopefully writing about them in this Blog, mostly for my own edification but also to record a reading of this marvelous text. I cannot say enough about the generosity of my two good friends, Egber and Selmin. They knew I would cherish this book, thus I am one of the first, no doubt, in the States to get his hands on this book.
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