Andrew Mango manages the seemingly impossible: he makes the intricate machinations of late-19th-century Ottoman politics and the vicissitudes of Ataturk"s many military campaigns as gripping as a novel. Partly this is a reflection of the very obscurity of his subject; Mustafa Kamal may have presided over the birth of a great modern nation, but few of us have anything other than a hazy sense of who he was or what he achieved. This gives Mango"s work a more powerful narrative drive than is usually the case in a biography: we read to find out what is going to happen, as much as to explore the depths and details of the man"s life and culture. But Mango doesn"t ignore the detail either. The early sections are the best, where the impossibly romantic ornateness of the old Ottoman empire are sparely and powerfully evoked; but the middle sections also work well, taking us through Kamal"s complicated and largely successful military career during the "long war" Turkey fought from 1911 to 1923. After the war, he proved himself a consummate politician, understanding that "the economy is everything: it is the totality of what we need to live", and presiding over a modernisation of impressive range. He could be ruthless, and Mango does not avoid the occasional violence and even ethnic cleansing that must be laid at his door. But he was also a believer in the equality of women, a man driven by a larger vision than personal gain (and therefore beyond corruption) and fascinatingly human. In the end the sweep of this enormous book is well-nigh irresistible. We are carried along, from past to present, from a rickety empire 700-years old to a dynamic and modern nation. --Adam Roberts