Gerald MacLean has provided his readers with a compelling portrait of life among English visitors and expatriates in the Ottoman Empire during the seventeenth century. He has integrated close readings of their books and correspondence with archival research to detail the complexities of life in diplomatic and Levant Company circles and connections to affairs back in England.

MacLean pursues two major arguments in his book—that relations in the early modern period between the English and the Ottoman Turks were not nearly as hostile as they have been imagined and that, in fact, the Ottoman world had a lure of fascination for the English that often led them to travel or reside there. Even for those who returned, as did all of the travelers detailed in this book, the experience became a fundamental constituent of their identity, transforming “what it meant to be English” (xiv).

To some extent this is a collection of four biographies, focusing in particular on the period of the authors’ eastern travels, but they are interesting and enlightening accounts of men who risked and encountered much more than their contemporaries. It is not entirely clear why these four travelers were chosen out of the many colorful individuals who left narratives of their journeys through Ottoman lands, such as Thomas Coryate, Fynes Moryson, or George Sandys, but the detailed exposition of the four lives that make up the body of this book are fascinating and instructive, and they provide a good sense of the temper of the English community in that era. MacLean is especially adroit at bringing out the differences between his travelers, not only in their personal lives, but in their opinions about the Ottoman world they encountered. The experiences of his travelers in the Ottoman realms varied considerably, the result primarily of their differences in personality and in their frame of mind when entering the Empire. MacLean conclusively demonstrates that English travelers were not necessarily either xenophobic or disdainful toward the foreigners they encountered.

The first of the four travelers was Thomas Dallam, who was perhaps the most unlikely to write an account of his travels. He was an artisan who had built an elaborate clockwork organ at the behest of Queen Elizabeth as a gift for the Ottoman sultan Mehmed III. Rather unexpectedly, Dallam was packed off to accompany the organ on its journey, apparently at his own expense. When he arrived in Istanbul, he became unwittingly ensnared in the diplomatic maneuvering surrounding the new English ambassador, Henry Lello. MacLean has provided an enthralling account of Dallam's resounding success in playing the organ before the Ottoman sultan, who promptly offered Dallam a house, a pension, and two wives if he would remain in Turkey, an offer that Dallam turned aside only by pretending to possess a family at home. MacLean also posits hostility between Dallam and Lello, who may have been jealous of Dallam's acclaim and access to the sultan.

MacLean's second subject is the devious Levant Company minister William Biddulph, who served as chaplain in Aleppo for eight years. Unlike the noncommittal and sometimes awkward Dallam, Biddulph expended much of his text in condemnations of Muslims and Catholics. But, as MacLean shows, Biddulph maintained an uneasy balance between his criticisms of sin and his desire to participate in it, which sometimes tipped toward the latter. Even the publication of his book was in part spurred by an attempt to exact retribution on Lello's successor, Thomas Glover.

The travels of the urbane Sir Henry Blount comprise the third vignette. The most polished and educated of MacLean's travelers, Blount was a follower of the Baconian scientific method and was inclined to view other cultures with a sense of tolerance. Among his intentions in publishing his book were to provide knowledge and to encourage open-mindedness. Thus his dispassionate account included detailed descriptions of Ottoman trade and military organization and also calm assessments of local customs, with little recourse to religion.

Finally, the last section details the purported adventures of a Mr. “T. S.” The protagonist of this prurient work claimed to be a young Englishman enslaved by the Ottomans who had the opportunity for participating in both military heroics and numerous sexual encounters during the period of his confinement. The section about T. S. is where MacLean's analysis is weakest. So much of T. S.'s text is clearly apocryphal that it is difficult to distinguish where fantasy ends and reality begins. In fact, T. S. seems to belong to different genre of literature—as MacLean himself states, T. S.'s account anticipated the novel. Rather than elucidation, as the other works intended, this work seems to include believable details as a device to further the plot. Since T. S.'s identity cannot be authenticated, it is impossible to determine whether or not his claim of travel is genuine.

MacLean is truly at his best when he patiently untangles the conflicting accounts, letters, and other bits of evidence that demonstrate the intrigue that seems to have permanently resided in the English mercantile and diplomatic circles within the Ottoman Empire. Through close readings he demonstrates that the travel literature that was published in this era, seemingly innocently, contained allegations and personal attacks that those in the know could decipher. He also provides a convincing picture of the difficulties of life among the Ottomans for English travelers and the sometimes startling flexibility and ingenuity they showed in surviving and thriving in such an environment.

The author also employs his many illustrations to good purpose, such as his analysis of the portrait of Samson Rowlie, aka Assan Aga, the eunuch treasurer to the Algerian governor, drawn to coyly suggest Rowlie's lost masculine attributes. The fact that MacLean has actually visited many of the locations described by the travelers he studies adds an air of authority to his narrative. Apart from its value to scholars, this book would be useful in the classroom; the accounts of life in the Middle East in the early modern period have the ring of authenticity and are sure to appeal to both scholars and students.