This book provides a detailed history of the establishment and early growth of the Ottoman Empire. Foss relates the military, economic, and cultural developments of the time to the political and physical geography of the Ottoman homeland, and especially its relations to the declining Byzantine Empire. The strength of this book is not in its conclusions but in its approach, particularly its focus on geographical landscape as a physical and conceptual site of historical investigation and study. This approach could prove inspirational for how we deal with other historical periods...it is innovative and evocative in its approach and a good addition to the interdisciplinary scholarship on the Ottoman-Byzantine world.