Geoffrey Lewis's book traces the history of Turkish
language reform with fascinating style. The reader is provided
with rich and well-selected examples, and the translation from
Turkish to English is excellent. The author's experience of
Turkey and his competence in Turkish are clear throughout. He
states that the book has two purposes: to acquaint the general
reader with the history of Turkish language reform, and to
provide students at all levels of Turkish with some useful
and stimulating reading matter. Lewis is successful on both
counts. Furthermore, the book is significant in that it sheds
light on the fact that, although language reform is not a
well-known aspect of the Kemalist revolution, it played a vital
role in the creation of the Turkish national identity. In other
words, the aim of Turkish language reform was not simply to
“purify” the language by eliminating foreign words
and foreign grammatical features; rather, it was part of a
nation-building project.