The Enemy at the Gate: Habsburgs, Ottomans, and the Battle for Europe
Product Details | Similar Products | Customer Reviews | Author: Andrew Wheatcroft List Price: $27.50 Our Price: $18.15 You Save: $9.35 (34%) Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours  |
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 | Product Details: Hardcover 384 pages Release Date: 28 April 2009 Publisher: Basic Books ISBN: 0465013740 Rating:   Sales Rank: 129562 | | Look for similar books by subject:
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| | Customer Reviews: deep dive on Hapsburg-Ottoman war history (08 July 2010)If you are looking for an entry level book on war between Muslim and Christian empires this is not it. This is a deep dive on the history, sociology, logistics, training and economics of the two great empires that clashed in eastern Europe. Offered great insight into the intrinsic differences in the early gunpowder army tactics of Europe and the mounted archers of the Ottomans. If you interested in fleshing out your understanding of the men, battles and geography of this conflict this book will be a good read. Promise unfulfilled (02 July 2010)I found the book to be disappointing. The main event, i.e., the battle for Vienna, was a subject I wanted to know more of, and that part of the book doesn't come off too badly (although it has its own problems). But, as others have noted, the book has some flaws. For one thing, after Vienna the narrative wanders around with a disjointed description of subsequent Habsburg-Ottoman relations. A battle here, a treaty there (with absolutely no description of the terms of any treaty, or why the parties entered into them), and side trips that have almost nothing to do with the subject of the book. For another, throughout the book its organization is spotty. The narrative jumps around to different times and topics, eventually wandering back to the current action but with no apparent thread connecting them. The book is especially weak as it approaches its end (which I was glad to get to), in which it tries to describe the ends of the two empires. The complexity of the last years of the Austria-Hungary and Ottoman Empires is simply too great to try to cram it into a few pages, and so the book just trails off. The author obviously did a prodigious amount of research, but what he really needed was an editor. missing pages (25 June 2010)I have not finished the book,"The Enemy at the Gate" by Andrew Wheatcroft, but I just discovered that the copy that was sent to me is missing pages 247-278. Thus it will be hard to rate the book. Good, but not really good (15 April 2010)First of all, this book is written in a very fluent and readable style. The author also has his facts right, and his enthusiasm for the topic is clearly visible. But that is only one side of the medallion. The other side is, that he breezes through the history of Habsburgs vs Ottomans, touching an aspect here, telling a story there, and because he also tries to shine some light on the Ottoman side of the story, and not only telling it from the western perspective, he creates a mosaic of information without explaining what the big picture is. The centerpiece of this book is the siege of Vienna, but the actual description of the daily action is somewhat short and it is obvious that the author is no military expert. In comparison with those of Roger Crowley about the siege of Constantinople (1453), or the siege of Malta (Empires of the Sea), this book falls short. Nevertheless, I enjoyed reading it, because it was a very interesting time and the author's style avoids the pitfall for all history books: being a loosely connected list of dates and facts. Al in all, it was entertaining, though not quite the history lesson I expected. Reach Exceeds Grasp (12 February 2010)In this relatively short book, Wheatcroft attempts to provide an overview of the Hapsburg-Ottoman rivalry, an account of the 1683 siege of Vienna, and some historiographic analysis of Western perceptions of the Turkish threat. Any one of these topics could occupy a fairly thick book and The Enemy at the Gate... suffers from Wheatcroft's ambitious attempt to cover all three topics in a concise book. No topic is covered thoroughtly. The overview of the Hapsburg-Ottoman rivalry is relatively superficial and leaves out a lot. We learn, for example, that the Hapsburgs and the Ottomans were often engaged in conflicts on more than one front. The Ottomans with the Shiite regimes of Iran, the Hapsburgs in Germany and against France. But what impact these conflicts had on Ottoman and Hapsburg resources, and the relative division of forces between southeastern Europe and other fronts is never discussed. There is little sense of how the Hapsburg state and the Ottoman Empire interacted in the general context of the European state system. You would never know, for example, from this account, that Wittelsbach Bavaria, which appears here mainly as a Hapsburg ally against the Ottomans was a French ally during the War of the Spanish Succession and that the Wittelsbachs had designs on becoming Holy Roman Emperor. Similary, the actual description of the siege of Vienna is not very detailed. As other reviewers have commented here, the quality of the maps is relatively poor. We get an idea of Austrian casualties during the siege but never of the Ottoman casualties. This may be due to documentary limitations, but no effort is made to address this crucial point. Wheatcroft, apparently relying on the work of other scholars, does well in laying out the important differences in Hapsburg and Ottoman military organization and performance, but as a campaign history, this account is superficial. Wheatcroft hardly does better in his historiographic analysis of Western perceptions of the Ottomans. He shows that distorted public images of the "Turk" were presented but his discussion and analysis is neither original nor thorough. I have to cavil about the subtitle, "The Battle for Europe." This may have been imposed by the publisher to give this book a more topical flavor but Wheatcroft uses this phrase in text several times. The battle for southeastern Europe, perhaps, but the implication that the successful defense of Vienna precluded Ottoman invasion of the remainder of Europe is undermined by Wheatcroft's own description of the limitations of the Ottoman war effort. | |
