Perched at the tip of Europe, gazing across the shores of Asia, Istanbul remains as much a city of crossroads as it has for past two millennia. The history of this fabled metropolis--known as Byzantium, then Constantinople, now Istanbul--is at once glorious, outsized, and astounding. Madden's biography of this city captures centuries of triumph and defeat, riches and poverty, seen through the eyes of those who inhabited it: the emperors and empresses, craftsmen and architets, sailors and fishermen, street vendors and harem concubines.
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