For some four centuries the Ottoman Empire had been one of the most powerful states in Europe as well as ruling the Middle East. By 1914 it had been drastically weakened and circled by numerous predators hoping to finish it off. With stalemate on the Western Front and the Ottomans joining the Central Powers, the British, French and Russians hatched an audacious plan to destroy their weakest opponent and carve out huge new empires for themselves: an ambitious and unprecedented invasion of Gallipoli . Eugene Rogan's remarkable new book re-creates one of the most important but little understood fronts of the First World War. With the skill, balance and sympathy that made his The Arabs so successful, Rogan brings to life a theatre of war that proved in its different way just as remorseless as any other. The Fall of the Ottomans includes detailed and gripping accounts of the principal battles, fought under the most brutal climatic conditions - from waterless deserts to the ice and snow of the Caucasus. Great cities were also fought over, as varied as Istanbul, Damascus, Baghdad and Jerusalem. If the fighting in the west was mainly between professional armies, the fighting in the Middle East destroyed whole peoples, with the most terrible consequences for ancient communities, from the Armenians to the Greeks.

Despite fighting back with great skill and determination against the Allied onslaught, and humiliating the British both at Gallipoli and in Mesopotamia (now Iraq), the Ottomans were ultimately defeated, clearing the way for the making of a new Middle East that has endured to the present - with consequences that still dominate our lives. Praise for The Arabs 'Engrossing . vivid . compulsively readable . an eloquent history of Arab hopes and disappointments.' Robert Irwin, Guardian 'Strikingly vivid and authoritative . He is a master of Arab sources.' Max Hastings, Sunday Times 'An outstanding, gripping and exuberant narrative, full of flamboyant character sketches, witty asides and magisterial scholarship.

' Simon Sebag Montefiore, Financial Times 'Brilliant . Mixing academic rigour with a lively narrative style, The Arabs is required reading.' Anthony Sattin, Spectator.