B. J. O'Brien's review is quite helpful and accurate in its critique. I am appreciative of Milton's work on this subject; it adds to the many accounts of Smyrna's tragedy. It also reads well. But I too think that the publisher and author have a historical obligation to clarify the perspective of the book in that the Smyrna we are told about is through the eyes and lives of the Levantines. Despite the horrific accounts told in the later half of the book of the average citizen of Smyrna, the narrative has us peering down from Bournabat as a Levantine, sipping tea, witnessing the tragedy mostly as an inconvenience of lifestyle. Because of this narrative, the millions of Armenians, Greeks and Turks seem distant to Smyrna, and if you are not verse in the other experiences of what happened, as a reader you may simply find yourself exclaiming, "Oh dear! Who will serve the tea?". I left this book with not only the horrific imagery of those September days (and years leading up to them), but also feeling that I was supposed to mourn the romantic lifestyles of the Levantines and feel it was an equal tragedy that there would be no more spring balls, maids, and gardens with wisteria. Of course it is valuable to have Smyrna's account from any group or individual, but without clarifying this to the reader it perpetuates a hegemonic pattern of viewing history and the experiences of minority groups as peripheral and invisible.

The book was delivered in a timely fashion.Aditionally this book was difficult to put down.It evoked feelings of sadness,anger and disgust.I love thi book and the author eloquently articulated the theme and plot.

As a native of Izmir I was really interested in this book and got to meet the author in a book review a couple of months. When I asked him how long he actually got to stay in Izmir, I got vague answers such as "not long enough maybe a couple of weeks". Of course, why would you wanna stay in a city about which you're writing a book more than a couple of weeks (or days maybe I'm still not very clear)?
In his book he claims that Greeks constituted the overwhelming majority followed by Armenians. According to him, Turks and Jews were really small minorities. Yet, I'm very curious about where he got these numbers because in his book review he clearly stated that he could not study the Ottoman archives because they weren't accessible. He was quickly corrected by an American scholar in the audience who apparently spent the summer studying the Ottoman archives. In fact even he did a quick internet search in his home in London while writing a book about Izmir he would have found at least this document where Greeks are just a big minority and Jews actually outnumbered Armenians:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Proportions_des_populations_en_Asie_Mineure_statistique_officielle_d1914.png
It is also interesting that there is no Jewish account in his book in fact he rarely mentions the Jews who lived in the city. When I asked him the reason his exact words were "well they were always pro-Turkish in this issue". Of course, he had to pick and choose the people who were anti-Turkish for his book.
The list is long. He of course does not mention the chief of the Smyrna Fire Department, Paul Grescovich who stated that Armenians started the fire. Again why would you even believe the chief of the fire department, what would he know about the fire?! He talks about the American missionary Alexander MacLachlan but conveniently omits his eye-witness account that states that Armenians set the fire. Instead, Mr. Milton talks about how Alexander MacLachlan could not stay in the city anymore because the new regime did not allow foreign owned schools; which is quite funny to me because I am a proud graduate of Lycee Saint-Joseph d'Izmir (I'm not over 100 years old by the way), my mother is a graduate of American Collegiate Institute, my grand-father attended a Jewish elementary school in 1930s; at the peak of the "regime"! I guess Mr. Milton did not get to visit these schools during his short stay in Izmir.

I am the avid Giles Milton fan who wrote a somewhat negative review about his first foray into Fiction - see my write-up on Edward Trencom's Nose - - and am excited about his return to his master craft - writing an in depth history book that reads like a novel, and not like the boorish stuff I had to read in college history classes.
I knew nothing about this event, or even the fact that Greece and Turkey fought battles AFTER World War I ended. I knew practically nothing about the displaced Greeks living in Asia Minor. What I did already know was how badly humans can treat each other - and this book reiterated that notion. I thank Milton for enlightening me into this cloudy - and dark for that matter - portion of our recent history.
I rate this 4 stars because I compare it to his previous outstanding works. As stated my previous review, everyone should read Samurai William.

This fascinating book provides readers with an exhaustively researched narrative tracing the events leading up to the destruction of Smyrna, Turkey's sophisticated jewel on the Aegean, in 1922. It traces the city's growth and development, and tells us about the life of this vanished metropolis; along with its exotic and cosmopolitan population. World events, particularly World War I, its aftermath and the emergence of modern Turkey doom the fabled city. The political manouevrings of the British, Greek and American Governments after The Great War are carefully traced, along with the birth of Turkish Nationalism under Kemal Attaturk. Rising from the ashes of the Ottoman Empire, and fanned by the ill-judged intervention of victorious wartime powers, we see how Turkish forces are driven to occupy and finally destroy this beautiful relic. The ghastly denouement is brought to life through chilling accounts of survivors, and we see how this legendary, exotic metropolis is undermined, and finally meets its apocalyptic end as a result of external political pressure. A sad and gripping story.

It is very disturbing that these days anyone with no background in any particular subject can publish a book on whatever s/he sees fit. I would love to ask this "author" whether or not if he even knows where Izmir is located. I am not going to even bother asking the "author" if he has any training in historical research, this "book" clearly shows that he has no training what so ever. This book is filled with HATE towards Turks! Because of my work, I lived almost 10 years in Izmir before moving back to the states in the late 1980's and I can assure you that I know more about Turkish history than this so called author does. I can't help to speculate that there is an Armenian hand in this "book". Book has so many flaws that someone needs to write a book to explain the flaws. Like how they did with Fahrenhype 9-11 :) One major flaw in this book is that, for some reason "author" FAILED miserably to explain the suffering the Turkish citizens have received from Greek / French invasion. I guess the "author" couldn't locate those facts on the Greek and Armenian achieves.

I stopped reading this hate speech "book" after page 30 and returned it to Barnes&Noble for a full refund! Smyrna (Izmir) was already in control of the Ottoman Empire and this author claims that Turks burned the villages, raped, women, and etc. Why would the Ottomans do this to their own land and own people? It is unbelievably inaccurate! Ottomans throughout their existence followed their tradition, which was to exist in unity, regardless of religion and ethnicity; that is what made them one of the great empires! Before Hitler, Jews faced another ethic slaughter in Spain before the Ottomans welcomed the Jews of Europe to the Ottoman Empire and treated them like human beings. What author has wrote in this "book" I will not even call them inaccuracies, they are just blatant lies with no historical evidence. How would we will feel that in 50 or 60 years, authors in Iraq starts to publish historical fiction books similar to this about American invasion? It will be full of hate like this book. I'm sure we would be up and arms about how they can write such things.

This book, Paradise Lost is nothing but another unsuccessful Armenian propaganda against Turks. If you truly want to learn about the Turkish history, read Gallipoli by Alan Moorehead, Ataturk by Andrew Mango, and Turks Today by Andrew Mango. Oh, by the way Izmir IS NOT a paradise lost its one of the most beautiful cities I have ever visited; I think it's even better than Istanbul. My advice to the author is that, if you make couple of grand out of this "book", you should buy a plane ticket to Izmir and actually visit the city. And for future reference, whether its the history of Japan, Turkey, or any other country that you want to thrash their culture of, it would probably will serve you better and make you a "somewhat credible author" if you actually lived in the country for sometime (at least 6 months), interviewed with the natives, and learn the culture before even attempting to write few words on a notepad!

This history of the Turkish city Smyrna in the early 20th century makes for compelling reading. I could not put it down once I had started. I had previously been unaware of this horrible story -- the death of over 100,000 people in less than a week, and the dislocation of so many more. I was unaware that Greek forces had invaded Turkey in the 1920's and pushed well into Turkish territory. When the Turkish army was able to repel this attack, it is little wonder (tho horrific) that they vented their rage on this primarily Greek city (more Greeks in Turkish Smyrna than in Athens at the time). The city is basically destroyed.

Poignant are the descriptions of the British, French, etc communities that had lived their lives of extreme priviledge for almost 200 years. While they still felt the bond with, for example, Great Britain, the British didn't much return the favor. These families had gone to Turkey during the reign of George III, made fortunes, and lived in luxury. Then, for many of them, everything was lost in a matter of days.

Poignant also are the descriptions of the brutality of the army: the looting, rape, murder, and the fire that destroyed the city.

But, to be honest, I didn't walk away from this book with any hatred for the Turkish army. First, we are talking about almost 90 years ago. Second, they were at the rag end of repelling a foreign invasion. Third, armies do awful things sometimes.... and Turkey was in the midst of its own post-Ottoman upheavals. Still, it was very sad and didn't need to have happened. There is never any excuse for ethnic cleansing.

I was saddened by the review that mentioned primary sources that weren't used. I still strongly recommend this book to anyone interested in 20th century history.

This is a rare book I wanted to keep reading until the end. The author's style is both fluid and interesting.

Although the tragedy at Smyrna in 1922 is the denouement, the book takes a much longer, and broader, view of Turkey immediately prior to being on the losing side in World War 1, the war itself (including the Armenian genocide), the dismemberment of the last of the Ottoman Empire by the victors, the charismatic premier of Greece (Venizelos) and his "Great Idea" to invade weakened Turkey and bring the western parts, populated by many Greek-speaking people, back into a larger Greece, as if it were the Ancient Greek Ionian settlements. Greece has the support of the Western powers in that venture, but its forces are eventually defeated by a brilliant, and equally charismatic, Turkish general Mustafa Kemal, who later became the Turkish Republic's first premier as Kemal Ataturk. He was responsible for modernising Turkey and moving it rapidly into the twentieth century. The victorious Turkish soldiers reach Smyrna (now Izmir) on the western coast and force the evacuation of the Greek forces. Unfortunately, Kemal cannot maintain order among his victorious troops for long and the tragedy of the massacre of hundreds of thousands of Armenians and Greeks ensues (there were more Greeks living in Smyrna than in Athens itself and Aristotle Onasis was one of the fortunate survivors as a young boy), as well as the burning and looting of most of the non-Turkish parts of Smyrna. The victorious powers of World War 1 have warships just off the coast but refuse to intervene to save the people for fear of creating an international incident by being seen to favor Greece in a limited dispute. Immediately following, was an enforced migration of Turks in Greece to Turkey and Greeks in Turkey to Greece (nearly two million people, in total).

The story describes the horrors of warfare in graphic detail (beware, young girls are raped and have their breasts cut off before being killed)but, as in other stories of extreme tragedy, there are incidents of incredible humanity to others, at great personal risk, described. Why does evil have to be a catalyst for acts of great goodness?

I take issue with other reviewers who see this as a biased account from the perspective of the "Levantines" -- rich European families who had made Smyrna their home for more than one hundred years and were the backbone of a thriving trade economy. In one sense, that is true, as their sources were more available to the author but, in another and more significant sense, it is not. The story is still highly politically charged, according to whether you are a Greek or Turkish sympathiser. The author carefully avoids writing the story from either of those two perspectives. Writing it from the "Levantine" perspective, while not totally ideal, is probably far more objective than from either of the other two perspectives, and so, a measure of balance is achieved. I always felt the author was trying not to be overtly pro-Greek or pro-Turkish. He is balanced in describing appalling massacres committed by both sides (the Greeks during their invasion and the Turks after defeating the Greeks and, ultimately, at Smyrna). He presents a sympathetic, if not totally admiring, picture of both Venizelos and Kemal (Ataturk) and a favorable picture of the previous Turkish governor of Smyrna who went out of his way to promote harmony among the varied ethnic populations in Smyrna, in the interests of Smyrna's economic success, despite being heavily criticised by his central government in Istanbul.

If you are of Greek or Turkish ancestry reading this story, I hope its balance (in the sense of the above) will promote a greater understanding of the other side and help to heal the rift betwen these two historically great nationalities. If you are Armenian, I hope that your tragic story will be better known by everyone.

A wonderful book that made me fight back tears at times!

While I understand and do not disagree with the concerns of the author of the lengthy review, the last third of the book was one of the most moving portrayals of human suffering I've ever read. The early departures into counterfactuals and value judgments added little to the book, and no doubt a subject matter expert would take issue with character sketches of major and minor figures, but the author does a praiseworthy job of putting human faces on unimaginable suffering. I have yet to find a comparable book devoted to the Armenian genocide.

The last third of this book is about the terrible days of September 1922; the larger part before that is an account of events during the preceding decade. As such, the book has no direct competitors. There is considerable material available for the dedicated researcher into the Smyrna tragedy, but only a few other books in English - Horton's book of 1926, for example, and one by Housepian Dobkin of 1971; and these are primarily about the September days. It was an excellent idea to design a book in the structure Milton has chosen and to write it in a style to appeal to a broad readership.

But the next most important thing about the book's design is more debatable. Smyrna was a city with an extraordinary ethnic mix. One element was tiny in number but great in economic and social power: a group of rich families called the Levantines. Rather disgracefully the publisher's blurb doesn't mention this, but a fundamental feature of the book is that, as far as he possibly can, the author tells his story from the viewpoint of the Levantines. This is a new approach: Horton and Housepian Dobkin say little about the Levantines. (Even so, Horton gives a much clearer definition than Milton of the term `Levantine'. Milton sometimes prefers fluency to clarity of explanation. But that is an aside.)

The book certainly makes a contribution to Smyrna studies, by drawing on hitherto unknown Levantine source material, but it is obviously intended for the general reader. If the author concentrates on the viewpoint of one tiny minority, can he give the reader, who may well start with little or no knowledge of the subject, an intelligently balanced understanding of the whole complex tragedy? That is the issue that Milton and his publishers had to consider when they conceived this book.

I don't want to accuse Milton of taking the Levantine side and being biased against some other group on some controversial issue or other. The real difficulty with his approach can be shown by a couple of examples. We are told that when the future of Smyrna was discussed at Versailles in 1919, the Levantines attempted to influence the deliberations, and did so. Well then, what about all the other ethnic communities of Smyrna? Did they also attempt to influence the outcome at Versailles? The author doesn't say whether they did or not. Soon after, we hear that Allied forces land at Smyrna and their commander talks to some of the leading Levantines before he decides how to dispose his troops. Did he talk to any leaders of any of the other communities? Did they try and talk to him and get turned away? We don't know. The author doesn't say.

There is another balance issue within this main one. You might easily get the impression from this book that most of the Levantines of Smyrna had British nationality, which, as far as I can tell from other sources, was not the case. The British Levantines were a minority within a minority.

The writing is fluent and, if you read without thinking too hard, you may not notice points like those above and so get an unbalanced view of the story. If, on the other hand, you do read carefully, you frequently have to observe: "Of course, although the author doesn't say so, that is only one aspect of the story. Maybe it looked different to some of the other people in Smyrna. Or maybe not. I can't tell." This rather reduces the pleasure of reading the book.

A slightly different issue is this. In September 1922 most of the Levantines, being rich and often having foreign passports, managed to escape fairly easily, while the ordinary citizens of Smyrna and the refugees from the countryside were either massacred or rescued after experiences of appalling desperation. Throughout the book the reader is encouraged to identify with the lucky Levantines and observe the main victims of the impending tragedy through Levantine eyes. Isn't this rather tasteless? After a hundred pages describing the sufferings of the Greeks and Armenians the book ends elegiacally with the author meeting an elderly member of a Levantine family that lost its wealth in the catastrophe. This is entirely consistent with the whole concept of the book, and yet the reader may feel: Are there no elderly Greeks or Armenians who lost their own flesh and blood that he could have met?

My assessment. If you already possess a small collection of books on the Smyrna catastrophe this one is worth having, since it does contain some interesting new material. If you just like the idea of a reliably balanced book about a little-known historical event, perhaps for a stimulating read on holiday, this book is not it; so find a book on some other historical subject. If you are midway between these two cases, get this book but remember all the time that you are reading a book that by its very design can only give an unbalanced view of the story.

Giles Milton turns out a lot of books by repeating what is in other books without also independently verifying what he is reporting. This book is about the rescue of 350,000 Greeks, Armenians and Jews in 11 days by Asa K. Jennings, my Grandfather. He is the highest decorated person in modern Greek history. Milton credits, for example, Asa Jennings along with a nurse who cared for the refugees and later wrote a book as though she was the saviour. However, there is no support in official records of the US Navy, Greek Government, etc. The Milton book is not a scholarly work. Those who are interested in the subject of Smyrna should read the best work written which is Ships of Mercy by Christos Papoutsy. The book Twice a Stranger by Bruce Clark does a great job explaining the conditions in Turkey at the time,but does not deal specifically with Smyrna. I did offer Milton access to boxes of original records of the rescue, but he declined being in a rush to publish. Roger Jennings