To the City: Life and Death Along the Ancient Walls of Istanbul

A journey along the crumbling defensive walls of Istanbul reveals the story of Turkey's history and becomes a mirror of its present--as well as a shadow of its future. Caught between two seas and two continents, Istanbul lies at the center of the most pressing challenges of our time. With environmental decay, rapacious development, and tightening authoritarianism straining its social fabric to breaking point, it represents the precipitous moment civilizations around the world are currently facing. In and around its crumbling Byzantine-era fortifications, Alexander Christie-Miller meets people who are experiencing the looming crisis and fighting back, sometimes triumphing despite the odds. To the City seamlessly blends two narratives: the story of Turkey's tumultuous recent past told through the lives of those who live around the walls, and the story of Ottoman Sultan Mehmet II's siege and capture of the city in 1453. That event still looms large in Turkey, as Recep Tayyip Erdogan like