Instruct: Classify Amazon reviews into positive or negative sentiment
Query: Enjoyable but Anecdotal; 2.5 Stars

A well written but highly impressionistic work on the Ottoman Empire. While very roughly chronologically organized, this is hardly a conventional narrative history but rather a series of anecdotes on different aspects of Ottoman history. This book appears to be drawn from prior secondary works and mining of contemporary eyewitness accounts, mainly those of European visitors to the Ottoman Empire. Goodwin is a very good writer and many of the individual sections are quite enjoyable and generally informative but the lack of clear narrative structure and analysis are major deficiencies. To really enjoy this book, you'd really have to already know the basics of Ottoman history and a fair amount of European history. More a work of literature than history.