I have a large collection of books on the Palestine campaign in World War One, however this is the first written from the Ottoman point of view. It is strictly dealing with the Palestine front and not the Persian front as well, which is a pity, but the perspective more than makes up for that.

Erickson is a professor military history at the US Marine Corps University and has written extensively on the period including his first book Gallipoli: The Ottoman Campaign.

An historian, as you would expect, each chapter is well referenced and has an excellent Bibliography and index.

The campaign fought by the Ottomans against the British in Palestine is often neglected in accounts of the Great War, yet it is fascinating from the point of view of military history and critically important because of its impact upon the modern Middle East. Edward Erickson’s authoritative and absorbing account of the four-year struggle for control of Palestine between 1915 and 1918 opens up this little-understood aspect of the global conflict and it does so in a strikingly original way, by covering the fighting from the Ottoman perspective. Using Turkish official histories and military archives, he recounts the entire course of the campaign, from the initial attack by German-led Ottoman forces on Sinai and the Suez Canal, the struggle for Gaza and the outbreak of the Arab Revolt to the British offensives, the battle for Jerusalem, the Ottoman defeat at Megiddo and the rapid British advance which led to the capture of Damascus and Aleppo in 1918.

This not an easy read, but for those of us who are interested in the detail it is an excellent find, especially as it provides a totally different perspective. If you are interested in the campaign it is a must buy, otherwise borrow it from a library.